Telco bundles to contribute 50% to online viewers by 2023

People who access online videos through telecom bundles will make up nearly half, or 399 million, of the total 818 million online video consumers by 2023, according to a Ficci-EY media and entertainment industry report. As a value-conscious country, Indians are drawn to telcom aggregators offering multiple streaming services services, whether for mobile or broadband connections on smart TVs.

Telcom subscribers currently make for 284 million of the overall 803 million online video viewers in the country. Online video refers to streaming services as well as free platforms like YouTube or Facebook.

The report has categorised customer segments as digital only (those who consume content only on digital platforms and do not access television), tactical digital (those who consume pay TV and at least one paid OTT service), bundled digital (those who consume pay TV and generally only telco-bundled content), mass consumers (those who consume pay TV and occasionally may consume some OTT content, usually free) and free consumers or those who do not pay for content at all.

Premium consumers, comprising digital only and tactical digital will cross 100 million by 2023, the report said, while the fastest growing segment will that of bundled digital consumers, growing to 399 million by 2023. The free consumer base will also grow as there are still 50 million houses today which do not have access to television.

“People in India only pay for value since they have such easy access to pirated content,” Karan Taurani, research analyst at Elara Capital Ltd, said, adding that 70-80% of the audience base of especially broadcaster-led streaming services comes from telcos. Going forward too, be it audio or video, people will look for telco aggregators like Reliance Jio that bundle multiple benefits, Taurani added.

Sanjeev Lamba, executive producer, Hungama Originals at Hungama Digital Media agreed that along with direct subscriptions, advertising and increasingly some branded or sponsored content, partnerships with communities of platforms such as telcos that offer reach to wide audiences are primary streams of revenue for streaming services.

To be sure, apart from regular data packs, video streaming platforms are now eyeing partnerships with telecom companies that have begun to offer premium OTT service bundles and broadband packages to build on the family audience base they acquired in India during the lockdown.

For instance, the latest Rs1,499 JioFiber Diamond plan offers 300Mbps speed and free access to 12 OTT apps including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar, JioCinema, Zee5, Sony Liv, VOOT, Alt Balaji, Sun NXT, Shemaroo, Lionsgate Play, and Hoichoi.

The Ficci-EY report said that smart connected TVs will exceed 40 million by 2025, thereby ending the monopoly of broadcasters on the large screen and leading to around 30% of content consumed on large screens to be social, gaming, digital and so on.

In a statement to announce a content deal with Hungama, Avneesh Khosla, chief marketing officer at telecommunications company Vodafone Idea Ltd, rebranded as Vi, had said that their “partnership-led content strategy has helped them adopt a telco-first approach for content monetisation in this hugely untapped market.” Livemint