MUMBAI: Twenty-First Century Fox owned Star India has injected Rs12.33 billion ($192.04 million) into its digital content arm over the last six months amid intense competition among online video providers in India.
Through a rights issue, Star India infused the money in Novi Digital Entertainment Pvt Ltd, the network’s step-down subsidiary formed in late 2014, which runs streaming video platform Hotstar and Starsports.com, Reuters, quoting from regulatory filings, reports.
Star India chairman & CEO Uday Shankar, in comments made after his network won the global media rights of the Indian Premier League, reaffirmed statements made in March at the annual FICCI Frames media and entertainment conference, on plans to export Hotstar to overseas territories.
Shankar stated that Hotstar will soon start its first phase of international expansion. “We will launch it in a few international markets in the next couple of months,” said Shankar.
Star on Monday won the India TV and digital (internet and mobile) rights as well as the rest of the world rights for IPL cricket for the next five years with a Rs163.475 billion ($2.55 billion) bid.
It is pertinent to note that it was for the digital rights to the IPL where the most action took place, with social media behemoth Facebook and Indian telcos Airtel and Reliance Jio all putting in bids above Rs3 billion (IPL bid summary provided by the BCCI can be accessed ).
It is in how Star exploited IPL’s digital rights over the last three years that Facebook took its cues from when making its Rs3.9 billion ($608.19 million) ultimately failed effort to swing the India digital rights.
In this short time frame, Star India’s online video streaming service Hotstar leveraged the IPL as its key driver to become India’s premier over-the-top (OTT) platform by a long mile.
“We’re focused on helping our partners experiment with a variety of Live content types – from ‘behind the scenes’ access to first-person athlete Q&As to live games,” a Facebook spokesperson told Economic Times last year. “We have seen great results when we have streamed games live – and continue to be interested in testing the viability of this content on Facebook.”
Facebook Live was where the NBA streamed its first regular season game to fans in India in January when the Sacramento Kings hosted the Golden State Warriors. In April, fans in India could also watch the World Snooker Championship.
Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, Liga MX, Conference USA and Mountain West Conference football are among the leagues currently with schedules of select live events streaming on Facebook.
Now that the likes of Facebook, Reliance Jio and Airtel have opened their cards as it were in bidding for the IPL rights, could the BCCI’s India cricket rights, when they come up for tender, be the next big battle stage in the Indian digital content arena? We think not. But that deserves a separate article.
