The move further consolidates OSN's position as the regional market leader for movies, and significantly bolsters the company's locally produced content offer, with ART Hikayat channels catering specifically for the extensive Egyptian market.

OSN's loss of the English Premier League sports rights to new pay TV entrant ADMC, and the acquisition of ART's sports channels by Al Jazeera, left a company facing two deep-pocketed competitors targeting its traditional subscriber base. In response, OSN aims to bolster its Arabic entertainment programming in order to diversify and grow its subscriber base beyond the wealthy expats who made up the core of Showtime's business, as well as build on the exclusive local content which Orbit established before the two platforms merged in 2009. The carriage deal indicates that OSN recognises the value of the ART channels to its pay TV business and direct investment in more exclusive local-language content would lend further strength to its diversification strategy.

While the carriage deal may simply represent ART's desire to distance itself from the costs of the consumer-facing pay TV market while retaining a subscription revenue income, the move may precede an acquisition by OSN of the ART channels covered by the deal. ART's impending exit from the consumer-facing Arabic pay TV market has been accompanied by sales of key pay TV channel assets (Al Jazeera acquired ART's array of sports channels in 2009). The company is also reported to be looking at exit strategies for its expat-targeting Pehla and FirstNet packages. OSN's recent conditional access swap-out would also make an acquisition - or at least an exclusive carriage deal following ART's consumer pay TV closure - likely

Non-exclusive access to the ART channels would be significantly less attractive to OSN, with heavy piracy of other platforms tempting away potential subscribers interested in OSN's carriage of the ART channel bouquet.