OTTs exploded in the past 6 months in India (and around the globe), one of the few businesses to thrive during the coronavirus pandemic. Covid-19 made all the governments around the world to restrict mainstream sources of entertainment, with theaters, live sporting events and concerts among others, being stopped indefinitely around the globe. But as the pandemic dies down and the lockdowns start getting removed around different parts of the world, OTTs could be hitting a major crisis, possibly this time next year
Netflix and Amazon Prime Video didn’t have to do much to retain their subscribers this year. With the pandemic forcing people to stay indoors, “nature” made the choice for their current subscribers, with the smart ones applying for the 6-month to 1 year plan. Disney+ reached it’s goal of 60 million subscribers in August of 2020, well ahead of it’s expected (yet conservative) year mark of 2024. The problem now is – how to keep these subscribers when the world finally opens up after the coronavirus pandemic dies down?
A lot of the subscribers have chosen to go for OTT subscriptions because of the unavailability of other entertainment sources as well as easy access. Most sports fans probably had to have begrudgingly taken up one or more subscriptions to pass their time after work as their favourite teams were not playing. A few of them would have watched the new content, while most of them would probably have watched news around the sports in general, highlight reels or shows dedicated to sports (or a particular sport, in general) which was available on the OTT. A prime example of such an OTT would be Disney+Hotstar.
There are of course, the theater lovers [both cinemas as well as the (Broadway) plays kind)], who have been forced to watch content on their mobile devices and/or laptops, smart television, etc. for the past few months. India is a prime example of a country filled with cinema lovers and the partial opening of theaters will definitely help the films that were running just prior to the pandemic.
Of course, we are not expecting a huge dent in the coffers of these OTT giants. But many of them will struggle to maintain these current numbers, going into next year. Maintaining subscribers while producing new quality content might be tedious, time consuming and cost more money. As many people may have noticed, Netflix has had to let go of many of it’s hit shows this year, because of a few of these reasons.
Also up and coming Indian OTTs such as MX player, Aha videos and Hoichoi might struggle to keep their users interested by this time next year, due to their smaller target audience and limited budget. We will have to wait and see the result after the pandemic has truly died down in the country and the lockdown has been completely lifted.
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