Streaming platforms gear up for festival season

With movie theatres functioning at full capacity for the first festive season in three years, video streaming platforms are making sure they don’t lose out on consumer wallets and eyeballs with the launch of fresh content. The holiday season has already seen Amazon Prime Video stream Madhuri Dixit-starrer Maja Ma to kick off the period and will have the next season of Four More Shots Please! for the Diwali weekend. Netflix is premiering Indian originals Mismatched, Qala, CAT and Monica O My Darling.  VOOT has begun streaming its reality show Bigg Boss that is popular online and MX Player will have international shows like The Secret Life of My Secretary and The General’s Daughter. Typically, OTT services that have seen a 15% spike in viewership during holiday period, expect this year to be on similar lines replicate even though outdoor entertainment has resumed.

“Festive season is a big time for OTT platforms. Ensuring a good festive release, refreshing the bank of acquired content with festive titles and also offering a series of offers on subscriptions is something that we follow,” Soumya Mukherjee, chief operating officer at Bengali streaming service Hoichoi said. People may flock to cinemas during festivals but they return to the comfort and options provided by OTT as theatres and OTT provide two very different experiences, she said. The platform will be releasing an original titled Hello! Remember Me? for Diwali.

For Durga Puja, the platform offered 25% and 30% discounts on subscription renewals via online and SMS respectively while new users were given a 20% discount on subscriptions. Festivities and the need for entertainment go hand in hand and it always helps to add an incentive, Mukherjee said.

Netlix and Disney Hotstar declined comment festive viewing but Zubin Dubash, chief operating officer, ShemarooMe and digital businesses at Shemaroo Entertainment said though people travel and socialise during festivals, it is time to watch content together with family or friends, too. “It’s time for family bonding and results in higher viewership and a significant number of new subscriptions. The idea is to have a line-up that provides customers value for their money,” Dubash said. ShemarooMe that focuses on Gujarati content will stream a film called Fakt Mahila Maate starring Yash Soni and Amitabh Bachchan in time for Diwali while its web show Yamraj Calling 2 will launch in November.

In the past two years, connected TVs have led to family viewing of OTT content, bringing people back to their living rooms, said Nikhil Kumar, vice-president, India and south east Asia, Mediasmart -- an Affle Company. Affle is a consumer intelligence technology firm.  “Our research has revealed that 84% of connected TV viewing households have more than one person watching CTV -- with OTT viewing being preferred by twice as many users as compared to user generated content,” he said.

The audience on connected TVs is now beginning to explore newer genres like games, live news,too.  “This consumption shift has also led to significant increase in co-viewing which is not restricted to a certain demographic either,” Kumar said.

While the spike in OTT viewership seen in the initial phase of the pandemic in 2020 may have stabilized over time, numbers are still significantly higher than they were before covid, said Karan Taurani, senior vice-president at Elara Capital Ltd. “The period bodes especially well for AVoD (advertising video-on-demand) platforms that could launch marquee content to drive ad spends,” Taurani said.