OTT entertainment has surged to new highs in the unprecedented lockdown amidst the Coronavirus outbreak. With TV in sleep mode due to the shutdown in the entertainment industry, and going out not an option anymore, OTT has proved to be a saviour of sorts. Not only globally, but also in India, more people have turned to OTT entertainment as their preferred source of entertainment.
However, an interesting thing that is specific to India, or maybe the Indian subcontinent, is that a number of OTT viewers do not buy their own subscriptions to view content on OTT platforms. Instead, they borrow subscriptions from friends and family to watch shows and movies on expensive OTT platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
A web portal recently conducted an online survey to gauge the actual percentage of people who do not buy their own subscriptions for popular OTT platforms, but instead use others’ subscriptions to view OTT content. And the findings were utterly eye-opening.
An astonishing 60% of OTT viewers do not buy their own subscriptions, but use a friend or sibling’s OTT subscription to binge-watch their favourite series. To go even deeper, 60.98% people watch Netflix through someone else’s account, 61.04% borrow Amazon Prime Video accounts, and 64.64% viewers watch Disney+ Hotstar on someone else’s subscription.
If we delve deeper into the data of people who lend use of their OTT subscriptions to other people, we find that 46.6% people lend their OTT accounts to siblings, and 26.2% people lend them to friends. In India, it really is all about family!
In other findings, 57.3% people wouldn’t mind buying their own subscriptions in the future. But a worrying 42.7% people will still continue to borrow OTT accounts to view content.
The findings are substantial pointers to how people in India consume content. They are also an indicator to OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar to overhaul their subscription tiers, so as to bring more people into the subscription net.
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