The regional OTT video content is all set to make a quantum jump from 27% to 54% by 2024. Overall 69% of films released on OTT in 2021 and 47% of OTT originals in 2021 were not in Hindi.
Similarly sports have also been a big draw for OTT. The recent case of FIFA World Cup. Viacom18, a media conglomerate jointly owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani and Paramount Global, spent an estimated $50 million to secure the digital rights to stream the FIFA World Cup in India on Ambani’s video-streaming service, JioCinema.
Growth of regional OTT content
The OTT space today is a highly competitive landscape of a large library of regional content.
Regional cinema has successfully landed on OTT viewers’ radars, significantly paving the door for series material. And major chunk of content budgets nowadays are skewed towards regional for many of the OTT platforms. And global giants have just made inroads into regional
Regional content creators are experimenting and pushing boundaries to tell stories across genres and the influx of internet and smartphones in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities is driving the growth of regional content.
The share of regional language consumption on OTT platforms will cross 50% of total time spent by 2025, easing past Hindi at 45%. (FICCI-PwC report 2021).Direct to consumer SVOD subscribers expected to grow to 193 million by 2026.Subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) revenues will reach above $1.8 billion by 2026.
OTT subscribing households will grow from 40 million in 2021 to 60 million by 2024 -
OTT content has long library value and the content shift is moving at a fast pace to more viewers shifting to regional content over mass content. The regional audience is very price sensitive and OTT players have to keep that perspective as well.
Regional is going to be the next global and we all can see that the bigger critical mass that any OTT platform needs is actually in the smaller pockets in the regional pockets of the country of India. So, the future scenario definitely lies in collaborating with regional OTT platforms or regional filmmakers and making content with them.
Sports broadcasting driving OTT revenues
The digital revenue for sports is estimated to grow from INR 1,540 crore in FY21 to INR 4,360 crore in FY26, at a CAGR of 22 per cent.
The same is likely to be driven by organic growth in the number of OTT viewers in India, as well as an increase in consumption of sports on OTT, fueled by the convenience of anywhere viewing.
The Indian Premier League continues to be the biggest impact property on Indian Television, reaching 400 million and cutting across demographics. The successes of Indian athletes on prestigious international platforms also drive the growth of India as a sporting nation.
The growth trajectory in India is expected to continue with the increasing penetration of TV across NCCS AB demographics and the growing interest in sports.The reach of premium sporting properties is significantly higher than that of premium GEC properties. IPL 2022 had an overall reach of 400 million which is 80 per cent higher than the combined reach of KBC, Bigg Boss, The Kapil Sharma Show, Khatron Ke Khiladi and Shark Tank.
The TV sports market was estimated at INR 7,050 crore in FY21, and the same is expected to reach INR 9,830 crore in FY 26, growing at a steady CAGR of 7 per cent.