By Shailesh Kapoor
The much-anticipated India-Pakistan clash in the Asia Cup, scheduled tomorrow (Sep 2), marks the start of a busy cricketing scene. The action is equally hectic off the field too. The start of the Asia Cup also coincided with the news that Viacom 18 has bagged the rights for BCCI-organized bilateral series in India over the next five years.
Viacom 18/ JioCinema’s entry into sports has disrupted the landscape in 2023. From being a driver of paid subscriptions, cricket is now playing the role of reach aggregator on OTT. The Asia Cup is available for free streaming on Disney+ Hotstar, and the ODI World Cup that follows will go the same way. Indeed, the era of paid sports content in India maybe over. It’s only a matter of time that sports channels on TV go free-to-air as well.
With the no. 1 sport in the country (and by some margin) being available for free, the state of several other sports, including football, tennis, wrestling, etc. hangs in balance. Will they continue to be “premium” offerings that get smaller audiences who are willing to pay for them? Or will the networks hope to expand the reach of these sports by making them available free? The question, of course, extends to television too.
Are we going back in time, by shunning subscription models in favor of those dependent on advertising? Far from it. For the last several years, almost all major players, in the streaming space in particular, but also in linear television, have over-rated an average Indian’s inclination to pay for content. They have priced their products at levels that are untenable, and then gone on to offer handsome discounts, to the extent of 50-75% at times.
But the core question is not about the price alone. It is: “Why pay at all?” Changing a market’s mindset from free to pay is an arduous task. We have seen how niche channels lost out once the NTO effects kicked in a few years ago. Outside the top 10 cities in India, paying for data, however low the rates maybe, itself is a choice to make. Stand-alone subscriptions are not even serious considerations. Reluctantly but inevitably, platforms have consented to being a part of aggregator bundles, where the ARPUs are much lower. A Jio-Netflix deal was announced just last week.
It may seem like an extreme position to take, but the days of pay content in India, especially when it comes to mainstream content that’s targeting a wider demographic, may be numbered. The major GECs going free-to-air in the next 2-3 years is not ruled out either. It would just take one of the top 4 to make the move and grab the top spot, and things may look very different overnight.
All hail the advertising economy!
Micromax has unveiled the new trophy for Asia Cup which will be awarded to the victorious team on 6th March 2016. Representatives of the participating teams – MS Dhoni from Indian cricket team, Bangladesh’s skipper Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, Amjad Javed, UAE Captain, Lasith Malinga from Sri Lankan team along with Shubhajit Sen, Chief Marketing Officer, Micromax Informatics were present to unveil the glorious trophy.