MUMBAI: Star India’s OTT platform Hotstar is India’s top video streaming service by a long mile with 75 million subscribers, according to a study by Counterpoint Research.
The study notes that the Indian over the top (OTT) content market is currently valued at $280 million, with nearly 100 million subscribers, and it is poised to grow at 35 per cent YoY. As the industry moves forward, global OTT players will face many challenges in capturing significant mindshare among Indian consumers, the study surmises.
The market is expected to see tremendous growth with increasing smartphone penetration across India. With availability of high speed 4G networks coupled with 130 million+ (and growing) smartphones being sold in India, the Counterpoint study sees consumption of video content growing significantly in coming years and expects it to look similar to video content consumption on mobile in many other parts of the world where smartphones have become primary content consumption devices.
As for Hotstar’s competition in the Indian marketplace, at a distant second is Viacom18’s Voot with 15 million subscribers. Video streaming biggies Amazon Prime Video and Netflix are at third and fifth positions with 11 and 5 million subscribers respectively. Sony Pictures Networks India’s Sony Liv is at number 4 with 5 million subscribers.
Hotstar, with its hybrid revenue or ‘freemium’ model, earns through subscription as well as advertising, with the largest share of revenue coming from advertisements.
Hotstar offers a variety of local as well as global content, through its Rs 199 per month subscription plan, which gives access to sports, TV shows, movies, and news.
But all said and done, it is sports in general and Indian Premier League (IPL) in particular that has primarily driven Hotstar’s spectacular growth in the last three years.
It was in February 2015 that Star India snapped up the internet and mobile rights for the IPL for seasons 2015 through 2017 for the Indian subcontinent. Additionally, it won the television and digital rights for overseas territories, except the United Kingdom and United States of America.
The network had bid Rs 3.03 billion for the IPL rights through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Novi Digital Entertainment Pvt Ltd, Hotstar’s parent company. In 2014, Star India licensed IPL’s digital rights from Bennett Coleman’s Times Internet Ltd and the two companies shared the said rights.
Following that up in September, Star outbid all comers for the global broadcasting and digital media rights of the IPL for the next five years with a consolidated bid of Rs 163.475 billion ($2.55 billion).
