Yash Raj Films is all set to enter the digital space. On the 37th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy, YRF has announced their digital debut with The Railway Men.
Regardless, if a player as big as YRF has entered the game then some changes are bound to happen.
According to reports, Yash Raj Films will invest a huge 500 crores in their upcoming OTT platform. Currently, even Netflix is not completely established in India. They are struggling to grab a big share in the Indian market. Sadly, their high prices and repetitive cliched content is not making them do so.
On the other hand, Disney+Hotstar offers a much better value for money and one can also watch IPL on that. As of now, the majority of films produced by Yash Raj Films are available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
The biggie has been in existence for many decades now and they are probably the most influential production house in Bollywood. They have some extremely popular films and they have announced just one web series as of now. Quite obviously, if they are making a whole platform for streaming, then there won’t be only one series. There will be a lot more than that.
Dharma production has already entered quite some time ago by the name of Dharmatic Entertainment.
Other biggies such as Red Chillies, Excel Entertainment, Balaji Motions, Viacom 18 may also enter the digital space.
So what are the changes that we may see after these biggies put their foot in OTT Platforms?
One thing that is definitely going to happen is competition. YRF is still not over their DDLJ Pride, and all the others always boast about a few good movies that they have produced. So quite obviously they will also seek such content on their digital platforms. Since we have to pay monthly or yearly subscription to such platforms, it is highly unlikely that all of them will create their own separate platforms. Because it will be too much to ask from us as an audience to pay the subscription fee of so many platforms. So there can be a merger of different production houses to create a single channel or they can stream their shows on an existing platform. Just the way Dharmatic Entertainment streams their shows on Netflix.
Whether competition creates a healthy opportunity for creators to make masterpieces or cringe cannot be declared as of now. But it is certain that the changes after Bollywood enter OTT is inevitable.
Another change is diversity. As of now, we are seeing a lot of repetitive shows on Indian OTT. Just after a few genres become popular a lot of other creators try to copy the same. After those production houses enter into OTT then we might see a more diverse Indian content than we are seeing right now.
Another big change that is inevitable is survival. There are many OTT channels that are struggling to survive.
Hulu, MX Player and a few more are not very established. Although Netflix is also not so great in India, at least they are not fighting to survive. After such big players enter the market, we can assume that it will be almost impossible or extremely difficult for a new platform to survive or come into existence.
So, these changes are highly likely to happen in the Indian OTT in the upcoming few months. And we would love to know your opinions.
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