The harsh reality of making money in the on-demand TV space is beginning to become evident. Just two weeks after Blinkbox sold out to retailer Tesco, Arqiva has announced that it is closing its online TV venture SeeSaw next month.

Arqiva has spent the last few months trying to find an investment partner or a buyer for SeeSaw. But having failed to do so, it has decided that the only solution is to shut the platform down. Commenting, a spokesman said SeeSaw “no longer fits the strategic direction we are taking Arqiva and requires considerable investment to succeed in an increasingly competitive market. We have tried to find an investment partner, however this has not proved possible.”

The SeeSaw experience has been an expensive one for Arqiva. It was launched off the back of ITV, Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide’;s proposed on-demand platform Project Kangaroo, which Arqiva bought for £8m. Although the service started with 3,000 hours of content such as Skins and Doc Martin, going on to add content from MTV, it could never really compete with the terrestrial broadcasters’; own on-demand catch-up services. Once the likes of Disney, Sky, Amazon (LoveFilm) and Tesco all made it clear they wanted to be in the on-demand space, the writing was on the wall.