A Fight To Become #1 On The Streaming Chain

Disney’s streaming service, Disney Plus was launched on November 12 and within a day, more than 10 million users signed up for it. With more and more companies being eager to launch their own streaming service, let’s take a look on what caused this ‘streaming obsession’.

How big are these streaming services?

Like really big.

Netflix has the world’s largest customer base, with over 150 million subscribers worldwide. Some estimates say that Netflix has between 1 million and 2 million subscribers in India while IHS Markit said that the company will probably triple its subscribers this year to 4.1 million. On July 2019, Amazon Prime head in India said that the Prime member has doubled in the last 18 months. Even though we don’t know the exact numbers, it could be close to 4.4 million, as per IHS Markit.

Why does every company wants a piece of the ‘streaming pie’?

Because there is a huge demand for it.

Gone are the days when one had to watch the mundane content in Doordarshan for hours due to a lack of choice. These days, streaming channels offer way too much choice to people. At the end of the day, nobody is satisfied with just one streaming service. I’ve seen people who have Netflix + Amazon Prime + Hotstar subscriptions and they would be easily spending up to ₹1500 every month.

People, mainly millennials, need more choice every day and they’re ready to go to different platforms to get what they want. And companies want to capitalise on this opportunity.

How does the future look like for the streaming companies?

Bright and Brighter.

As per Boston Consulting Group (BCG), India’s video-on-demand market could grow to $5 billion by 2023 from $500 million last year. So, it’s not a regular pie but a $5 billion pie and every company will fight to the death to have a piece. BCG also estimated paying subscribers will probably rise to as many as 50 million, while users of advertising-supported video-on-demand will reach 600 million.

At the end of the day,

there is a huge demand for these services in the Indian market. So, what if we reach a point where there is so much free content (including pirated content) that we don’t want to spend on these services anymore? What will these companies do then? A question to think about.