On 18 May, as tech-and-entertainment behemoth Sony Corp.’s global leadership team held the annual corporate-strategy meeting at its Tokyo headquarters, Indian television (TV) and over-the-top (OTT) media observers listened closely for signals on the company’s India plans.
It had been nearly one-and-a-half years since Sony’s India unit—Sony Pictures Networks—announced a merger with rival Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, with the former owning just over half of the combined entity.
While Sony did not delve into the deal in its post-meeting briefing, the company did state that it expected expected ET Sony-Zee merger likely to be completed by Sept this year: Sony CEO Read more the merger to be completed in the first half of the fiscal year ending March 2024. It also released an important number: its streaming arm Sony Liv’s global subscriber base had risen to 33.3 million, from about 18 million at the start of 2022. About 80-85% of these subscriptions came from India, said Danish Khan, executive vice president and business head, Sony Liv.
This strengthened the belief among the OTT executives that Sony Liv had become a major player in the sector, threatening even subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) leaders such as Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar.
“A year ago, we wouldn’t even track [Sony] LIV but now it suddenly seems impossible to miss,” a Hotstar executive told The Ken. They and other executives The Ken reached out to declined to be named because they were not authorised to speak with the media.
Since December 2021, when the merger was announced, discussions have mostly centred around the two firms’ TV units—the bedrock of the hundreds of crores each makes in yearly profits. On the other hand, their OTT platforms Sony Liv and Zee5 were, at best, sidekicks in the country’s OTT ecosystem dominated by Disney+ Hotstar back then. In fact, Hostar’s nearest competitor at the time, Amazon Prime Video, was less than half its size.
But over the past 17 months, the pecking order in the Indian OTT ecosystem has been changing fast.
Hotstar has been losing subscribers subscribers Guardian Disney+ loses 4m subscribers amid exodus in Indian market Read more and key partnerships key partnerships The Ken How a removal from Jio bundles spells further pain for Hotstar Read more due to the loss of digital rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL)—the annual T20 franchise cricket league—in early 2022.
