SVOD will contribute a third of online video revenues in India by 2024 with Hotstar merging as a key player in both SVOD and AVOD segments, said the report by Media Partners Asia (MPA) that projects the online video revenues in Asia Pacific reaching $50 billion by 2024.
The Online Video sector, this year, had delivered $27 billion in advertising and subscription revenues, a 24-percent gain on 2018, according to MPA’s latest in-depth report, Asia Pacific Online Video & Broadband Distribution 2020.
According to Vivek Couto Of MPA, Hotstar is a key player in both SVOD and AVOD segments with IPL cricket being the key driver of demand. The company has also seen demand for Star India catch-up content and premium Hollywood entertainment.
Moreover, much of Hotstar’s ad monetization comes from sports, which accounts for just one-third of viewership on the platform. Increased monetization of entertainment will be potentially lucrative in long-term.
MPA also estimates that Hotstar will account for well more than 20 percent of India’s online video advertising market in 2019. The platform is expanding its original series, branded Hotstar Specials, and revamped its paid tiers in March. The Hotstar Specials are now available alongside live sports in a new pack called VIP, designed to bring more people into Hotstar’s paid ecosystem and keep them there at US$5 a year.
MPA estimates that Hotstar will end 2019 with 7.5 million paying subs—the substantial majority on low ARPU plans.
Meanwhile, Amazon Prime Video has also made significant progress in India where the operator has invested in local content while other Amazon services also scale . MPA expects Prime Video to benefit from Amazon scaling its flywheel in key markets in Southeast Asia in the coming years.
The report also predicts that Disney+ will make its entry in to Southeast Asian markets like Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan and its expected that the platform will be amongst the top 10 in Asia Pacific within five years’ time.
