How can businesses thrive in the rapidly evolving subscription economy? At Retention Zone LIVE 2025 in Amsterdam, industry leaders and innovators came together to tackle this very question. With industry experts like Ben Keen and Soumya Sriraman, leading D2C businesses (OneFootball and TOD), and solution providers (Cleeng and Alpha Networks), the event explored strategies for retention, D2C growth, and adapting to major shifts in the subscription economy. In this post, we dive into the top insights and takeaways from the event.
Navigating global D2C: the MENA monetization puzzle
Scaling a D2C business globally introduces immense complexity, particularly in markets with diverse economic and technological landscapes. John-Paul McKerlie (VP of Sales and Marketing) from beIN Media Group/TOD, provided a compelling case study on the unique monetization challenges in the Middle East and North Africa region.
Operating across 24 countries and 100 million households, beIN Media Group/TOD faces a significant hurdle: low credit card penetration. As J.P. starkly put it, “only one out of fifty people in MENA has a credit card”. This reality forces a departure from standard subscription models and demands creative, localized payment solutions.
To overcome this, TOD relies on several key strategies:
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Telco partnerships: Leveraging telecommunication companies as billing partners is essential to reach a wider audience. “Advertising is one solution but B2B is the other. How can I get someone to pay for your subscription for you? This is how you scale in MENA at the moment, and it’s also the big reason why there’s no global players that have been very successful in launching in these territories”, said John-Paul.
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Inventive product offerings: beIN Media Group has developed flexible products like pay-per-view options and single-match passes to cater to varying consumer needs and price sensitivities. “For example, if you see numbers light up every time Liverpool plays, why not introduce passes for Liverpool matches?” explained J.P.
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Hyper-personalized campaigns: The team tests four or five different campaigns every weekend to optimize revenue and retention. “We need to be able to build all of the campaigns and then distill down to the ones that are working and then maximize the volume. That means I’m going to be creating lots and lots of offers. And this architecture is fundamental to why we as a team picked this solution with Cleeng.”
"The MENA region is a very fragmented market – very, very complex in terms of collecting cash, with a very sophisticated proposition design sitting over the top of it," says J.P., emphasizing the unique challenges faced in the region. With roughly 350 million people spread across 100 million households and around 12 languages spoken throughout these territories, the diversity of the market creates significant operational and technical complexities.
To address these challenges, a centralized system for managing entitlements and offers is essential. Cleeng enables TOD to maintain scalability and flexibility across all channels while ensuring a consistent user experience, even within such a fragmented payment landscape. J.P.'s experience serves as a reminder that achieving global D2C success requires not only technological agility but also a deep understanding of the local market dynamics.
The platform evolution: from publisher to multi-product ecosystem
The journey from a single-purpose app to a multifaceted digital platform is a hallmark of modern tech success. Yannick Ramcke, the OTT General Manager at OneFootball, chronicled his company's evolution, offering a blueprint for building a scalable, data-driven ecosystem.
OneFootball began as an early entrant in the Apple App Store (one of the first 1,000 apps), as a media publishing business, but has since transformed into a comprehensive D2C platform. Yannick noted a pivotal shift: "Today, 98% of OneFootball's content is third-party". This transition from being a content publisher to a platform aggregator has allowed OneFootball to connect football fans with a wide array of services, including merchandise, ticketing, betting, and OTT streaming.
This complex, freemium model, handling over a thousand concurrent SKUs across more than 100 jurisdictions, presents significant operational challenges. Yannick emphasized the need for a robust and modular tech stack to manage this complexity. Key components include:
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Modular integration: The ability to seamlessly connect various third-party services.
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Robust CRM: A powerful customer relationship management system to handle user data effectively.
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Seamless data handoffs: Efficient transfer of customer data between D2C and B2B systems to facilitate partner relationships and local payment processing.
Yannick Ramcke shared his experience managing a global D2C platform, highlighting just how intricate the process can be:
"Running a D2C business across 100+ jurisdictions is highly complex; you can’t do it on the side. Beyond basics like data privacy and tax remittance, you need to manage local languages, currencies, and payment methods. Take Brazil, for example: without credit card support, you go nowhere – I learned that the hard way. If you’re in just a handful of countries, you might set up local entities to handle payments and compliance. But once you scale to 50+ markets, you quickly realize you need a partner whose core business is solving these challenges. That’s a key reason we work with Cleeng."
OneFootball’s story illustrates that as a business scales and diversifies, its underlying technology must evolve to support greater complexity and integration.
Mastering retention: The science of subscriber management
In the subscription economy, churn is the ultimate enemy. Soumya Sriraman, formerly of Amazon Prime Video and Britbox, among others, delivered a powerful session on the sophisticated, data-driven strategies required to master retention. With acquisition costs for a single Netflix customer at $100, she noted that losing subscribers is “not fun.”
Somya broke down voluntary churn into distinct categories:
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offer churn
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reactive churn
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revenue churn;
to highlight the different levers businesses can pull. A surprising insight she shared was that "50% of people who cancel will resubscribe within a year," indicating a significant opportunity to win back former customers.
She advocated for several key strategies to improve retention:
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Offer pauses, not just cancellations: Providing customers with the option to pause their subscription is a simple yet effective way to prevent permanent churn.
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Deep martech integration: Soumya stressed the importance of communication between subscription management platforms and marketing tech stacks. When these systems "actually talk to each other," retention communications can become truly relevant and personalized.
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AI-powered personalization: She shared a powerful example of using AI to personalize user engagement. By analyzing search behavior, teams can dynamically generate more effective push notifications than generic communications.
Soumya’s insights reinforce that retention is not a passive activity but an active, data-driven discipline. By integrating technology and leveraging AI, businesses can create highly personalized experiences that build lasting customer loyalty.
Hybrid monetization: the new standard in streaming
The conventional wisdom of pure-play subscription models is being challenged. Ben Keen, a leading industry analyst, framed the modern streaming market as one where flexibility and hybrid approaches are paramount for profitability. He pointed to Netflix as a prime example of a market leader that maintains low churn and high retention by embracing new revenue streams.
The key takeaway was the strategic shift toward ad-supported tiers. Keen revealed a compelling statistic: “Netflix actually makes more money per user from those that take the ad tier.” This demonstrates that a hybrid mix of subscription and advertising can generate higher average revenue per user (ARPU) than a traditional, subscription-only approach.
This model allows platforms to cater to a broader audience, including price-sensitive consumers who might otherwise churn. By integrating advertising and live sports, streaming services can drive profitability, but Keen cautioned that this is only effective as part of a smart, flexible subscriber-retention strategy. The future of monetization is not about choosing between subscriptions and ads, but about intelligently combining them to maximize value.
The future of subscription tech: modular, agile, and actionable
As the subscription landscape matures, the technology that powers it must become more accessible and powerful. Gilles Domartini (CEO and founder) and Damien Organ (VP of Product Marketing) from Cleeng introduced Cleeng Pro, an enterprise-grade subscription management platform designed to be deployed in minutes, not months. Their presentation highlighted three core principles shaping the future of subscription tech: modularity, speed, and actionable insights.
For many businesses, moving to a direct-to-consumer model means juggling multiple vendors for payments, tax, support, and analytics. This fragmented approach creates data silos and distracts from the core mission of creating great customer experiences. Tax compliance alone can be a significant hurdle for those used to the app store's managed environment.
Cleeng Pro solves these pain points with a unified, turnkey growth engine that goes live in under an hour. It consolidates essential capabilities into one platform, eliminating vendor complexity. The system simplifies monetization with flexible strategies and tackles global complexities through an optional Merchant of Record feature, which handles tax compliance, chargebacks, and fraud prevention.
Cleeng Pro’s mission is to democratize advanced subscription management for businesses of all sizes. Key features include:
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Modularity: Seamless integration of payments, analytics, and customer support.
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Rapid setup: Launch a fully functional subscription service in about 60 minutes.
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Actionable KPIs: Access over 40 key performance indicators, including deep retention insights, from day one.
The platform unifies multi-channel data to provide dynamic analytics, empowering businesses to act on market trends swiftly. This approach supports rapid prototyping and easy scaling, giving both large enterprises and smaller players a competitive edge.
“The idea we had behind Cleeng Pro was not to give people a set of tools, but really to give them a road engine that they could deploy themselves in under 60 minutes.”, said Gilles Domartini.
However, the most exciting part of his presentation was the sneak peek into the next frontier: AI-driven, context-aware interfaces. Gilles Domartini predicted the eventual disappearance of traditional dashboards, replaced by conversational AI.
He demonstrated how Cleeng’s new dashboard will allow users to simply ask for help, insights, or actions via prompts. The AI-ssistant guides them, creates offers, generates actionable data, and connects everything contextually. Gilles summarized the core problem this solves: "The problem is not to get the data, not even to get the insights, it’s to get from insight to actions. That’s exactly what the tool is capable of doing." He concluded with a powerful promise: "in about 10 minutes, you get from insight to campaign," complete with pricing suggestions and dynamic actions.
How Alpha Networks and Cleeng transform subscription management for D2C platforms
The final presentation came from Guillaume Devezeaux, CEO of Alpha Networks, who discussed the future of SaaS platforms and how AI could transform user interfaces to accelerate the path from insight to action. He also spoke about Alpha Networks’ journey from providing modular API software for large telcos to launching an end-to-end SaaS platform. The launch of Cleeng Pro was a pivotal moment, opening "a lot of new opportunities." Guillaume cited Le Tigre Yoga, a yoga and wellness aggregator, as an example of a client that could now manage multiple brands and business models – from free ad-supported to premium subscription – with streamlined scaling thanks to Cleeng Pro.
Guillaume became a vocal advocate and an early adopter, highlighting Cleeng Pro's value for medium-sized businesses with fewer than 10,000 users. He highlighted its all-in-one nature, which includes analytics, churn prevention tools, and all necessary payment flows.
Building a resilient subscription business
The insights from Retention Zone Live 2025 paint a clear picture of the future of the D2C and subscription economy. Success now depends on a strategic blend of agility, modularity, and AI-driven intelligence. Businesses must move beyond rigid, one-size-fits-all models and embrace flexible, hybrid approaches to monetization. They must invest in integrated, data-rich technology stacks that allow for deep personalization and rapid response to market changes.
As the industry continues to evolve, the ability to translate data into immediate, effective action will be the ultimate competitive advantage. The vision presented by leaders at the event is one where technology empowers operators, partners, and creators to build truly human-centric services that not only attract customers but keep them for the long term.
A big thank you to all those who made it to the event. We’re looking forward to seeing you next year! We invite you to create a free Cleeng Pro account to test the 60 minute set up process!
