Meet airG: A Company That Is Bringing NBA Games To The Screens Of 2 Billion Subscribers In The Middle East, Latin America And India

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We sat down with airG’s CEO and founder Frederick Ghahramani to learn more about his company, airG and its partnership with the NBA League Pass. This multi-year partnership allows NBA fans in 40+ countries across the Middle East, Latin America and India to stream live games on NBA League Pass across multiple devices as well as pay through their mobile phones.
Here what we gleaned from our conversation:

Q: Please tell us what is airG and what does it do?

A: airG Inc. is a leader in mobile content billing and distribution. We have reached hundreds of millions of customers and generated billions in revenues for the company’s mobile operator partners and we continue to grow. With a foundation of over 2 decades in mobile content billing and distribution, and direct carrier billing relationships that span 40+ countries and 150+ mobile operators, airG provides premium brands a unique one-stop-shop for mobile billing, distribution, and monetization.

Q: Recently, your company partnered with the NBA League Pass, what are the details of this partnership that you can share with our readers?

A: We have a multiyear collaboration with the National Basketball Association (NBA) to make live NBA games more easily accessible to fans across the Middle East, Latin America, and India.

The multiyear collaboration will allow fans to subscribe to NBA League Pass – the league’s premium live game subscription service – using their mobile phone account or pre-pay airtime credits across airG’s 50+ mobile operators that collectively reach more than 2 billion subscribers in 40+ countries throughout the Middle East and Latin America, as well as India.

Q: This partnership seems like a win-win for everyone, airG, NBA and consumers. To you, what does this partnership mean for all parties involved?

A: For us at airG, this is an opportunity to continue expanding on the strengths of our expertise and at the same time sharing the magic of the NBA to a whole new generation of fans around the world while enabling customers who are basketball enthusiasts in Latin America, the Middle East, and India to have access to a great source of entertainment.

Q: Can you provide an overview of your company’s role as a direct billing carrier in the sports industry?

A: The Middle East, Latin America and India allow sports brands to reach 2 billion potential fans – however while the audiences exist in these markets, they also come baked-in with a monetization challenge.

• Path to Market: Conventional TV broadcaster revenues have fallen as audiences have shifted to digital and online, and advertisers have followed suit abandoning TV for digital.
• Licensing Revenues: Corresponding licensing revenues for sports brands have decreased and many brands no longer achieve residual revenues beyond basic minimum fees;
• Consumer Billing: The majority of customers in this region don’t possess credit cards, or the ability to transact online for premium services and channels;

What airG provides is a solution to this monetization challenge. Over the past 20 years, airG has built direct billing connections in over 30 countries through over 100 mobile operators – wherein we have the ability to micro-bill directly on a customer’s phone bill or to deduct balance from their prepaid airtime card in exchange for accessing a digital service.

In this way, we enable sports brands to solve the monetization challenge as they distribute to these 2 billion customers.

Q: What are key challenges you face as a direct billing carrier, and how do you address them?

A: Every mobile operator’s billing system has their own business logic, technical infrastructure, customer care interface, regulatory and connectivity challenges. We have spent over 20 years building a business platform that aims to abstract all these business and technical rules into a simple billing system that sports brands can use to monetize their services.

Q: How do you see the future of direct billing in the sports industry?

A: Many countries in the Middle East, India, and Latin America remain ‘new’ and unexplored for many sports brands. With limited competition, and now a clear path to monetization, many sports brands are realizing they can bolster their audience by up to 2 billion new fans thanks to digital distribution, and billing through airG.