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India’s Mukesh Ambani streams into race for online viewers as Netflix, Disney+ eye growth market
- Reliance Industries and its joint-venture media partner, Paramount Global, paid US$3.1 billion last month for IPL cricket streaming rights
- Low-cost, high-speed mobile internet, along with a young internet savvy population, means many Indians are shifting their viewing habits online
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Why you can trust SCMP
When billionaire Mukesh Ambani bid only for the live-streaming rights to India’s top cricket league matches – passing up the TV broadcast contract – it was a clear message that the future lies with online streaming, not traditional TV viewing, analysts say.
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For investors, India holds huge potential as Asia’s only full-scale, high-growth streaming market outside China. There’s “high headroom for penetration”, said Mandeep Kohli, managing director at Boston Consulting Group India.
Consider the numbers: out of India’s 1.4 billion people, there are only 102 million streaming-video-on-demand (SVOD) subscribers, according to a Deloitte Consulting report. Some 47 per cent of people in the country are internet users. But that is still far fewer than China where 71 per cent are online, or the US where the figure is 90 per cent.
Ambani’s oil-to-retail behemoth Reliance Industries, and its joint-venture media partner, Paramount Global, paid US$3.1 billion last month for the Indian Premier League (IPL) streaming rights, slightly more than the US$3 billion Disney forked out for the TV rights.
Reliance’s focus on getting the digital rights for what’s known as India’s Superbowl was “a great endorsement of the streaming economy”, said Mihir Shah, vice-president of Singapore-based Media Partners Asia (MPA).
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