Virgin Media is shutting down its proprietary digital storefront on November 1, requiring users to migrate their purchased movie and TV libraries to Rakuten TV. The transition establishes Rakuten TV as the primary transactional video provider across Virgin Media's hardware ecosystem, including Virgin TV 360, V6, and Stream boxes.
The closure of the Virgin Media Store represents a strategic retreat from proprietary transactional video-on-demand (TVOD) infrastructure in favor of a third-party partnership model. By outsourcing the storefront to Rakuten TV, Virgin Media reduces the operational overhead of managing licensing and digital rights for a standalone library while maintaining a transactional revenue stream through its hardware. This move reflects a broader industry trend where network operators are prioritizing their role as hardware aggregators rather than direct content retailers. Watch for whether other European telecommunications providers follow suit by offloading their legacy digital lockers to specialized global platforms like Rakuten or Apple.
This transition mirrors recent strategic partnership efforts by other European operators to modernize their streaming infrastructure.
Virgin Media will shutter its proprietary digital store on November 1, ending its standalone transactional video service. Customers must migrate their existing movie and TV libraries to Rakuten TV, which becomes the new provider for Virgin TV 360, V6, and Stream hardware. This shift reflects a broader industry move toward third-party aggregation.
The Virgin Media Store will cease all movie and TV box set sales on November 1.
Existing customers must migrate their purchased movie and TV libraries to Rakuten TV, which is replacing the native store on Virgin hardware.
Customers must manually sign in to the Rakuten TV app and select the transfer option to move their existing purchases to a new Rakuten account.
Yes, the transition to Rakuten TV includes access to their existing catalog of free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels.
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