BFI Player: How a streaming underdog is finally coming of age in lockdown

In a sea of homogeneity, the British Film Institue’s answer to Netflix and Amazon Prime has carved out a niche as the streaming world’s most diverse and inclusive alternative, writes James Moore

Mark Jenkin’s ‘Bait’, one of the titles available on BFI Player, was shot on a vintage 16mm camera (BFI)

A veritable deluge of money has poured into streaming. Every entertainment and tech giant in America seems to have jumped in, armed with billions of dollars in the hopes that they can either steal a slice of Netflix’s pie, grab a piece of a bigger one, or best of all both. A good chunk of it has been raised in debt, and it’s a racing certainty that there will be some very high-profile casualties down the line, which will create some very big headaches, and generate some very big payoffs to CEOs (because there are always big payoffs when CEOs mess up).

In the midst of such a feeding frenzy, you might think that a niche player run by a British cultural charity would be at grave risk of ending up looking like one of the victims in a J-horror movie. Not so, says the British Film Institute (BFI). We’re doing just fine with the BFI Player, thanks very much.

The “Player”, as those who work on it refer to it, is clearly a flyweight in financial terms. But the best flyweights are usually worth watching because they’re entertaining and they pack a punch. This one has been helped in no small part by wearing a strikingly different coloured pair of gloves, not only in terms of its consumer offer but also its business model.