Indian ticketing giant BookMyShow launched in India’s burgeoning TVOD market on Friday armed with deals from Hollywood studio majors and 600 movie titles including “Wonder Woman 1984,” “Unhinged” and “Tenet.”
The service, called BookMyShow Stream, has deals in place with Hollywood suppliers including Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures, and with Indian producers Viacom18, Shemaroo, Rajshri Productions, Divo and Sillymonks.
Films are available to rent for a limited window or to buy, with pricing ranging from INR40 ($0.55) to INR799 ($11). The pricing is dynamic and depends on the film’s freshness and scale. “Wonder Woman 84,” for example, will cost INR799 to buy, or INR499 ($6.85) to rent for 30 days, with customers having two days to watch it once playout begins.
The new titles will be available after they have finished their theatrical run. The service’s aim is to expand to 2,000 titles over the next year, with 40% of content being exclusive to the platform.
“BookMyShow Stream is a natural extension of our cinemas business and respects the existing theatrical windows for content. It empowers users to pay only for the content that they watch – a prevalent trend in other global cinema markets, as yet untapped at scale in India,” said Ashish Saksena, COO, cinemas, BookMyShow. “BookMyShow Stream aims to inculcate global consumption trends by providing a highly curated avenue for handpicked cinema from across the world.”
The Indian streaming market is dominated by SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand) services like Disney Plus Hotstar, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, ALTBalaji and SonyLIV. Players in the TVOD (Transactional Video on Demand) market include global giants Google and Apple, and local outfits Shemaroo and Zee.
Research firm Statista estimates revenue in the TVOD segment at $247 million in 2021. It projects an annual growth rate of 12.5%, resulting in a market volume of $396 million by 2025.
“The TVOD market in India is very premature and Indian audience is more value-based wherein they would pay for a bouquet of services and variety of content, but refrain to pay on a transaction basis,” Indian media and entertainment analyst Karan Taurani, VP, research analyst, Elara Capital, tells Variety. “Scalability of TVOD remains a big challenge as there is only a very niche audience, just like there is a niche audience for Netflix.”
In recent years BookMyShow has branched out into event management. Some of the properties that BookMyShow has brought to India include U2’s “The Joshua Tree” tour, NBA’s debut games in India, Disney’s live action musical “Aladdin,” Cirque du Soleil “Bazzar” and concerts by Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Network18 Group holds a 39% stake in BookMyShow.
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