English Entertainment
Game of Thrones Season 7 starts on Hotstar, minutes after US showing
NEW DELHI: The highly anticipated premiere of Game of Thrones Season 7 launched on video-on-demand platform Hotstar on 17 July, with the first episode of the new season available for the audience to view within minutes of its American telecast.
The series was telecast under the Hotstar Premium service. In response to the burgeoning audience for international content in India, Hotstar has partnered with the world’s largest studios, like HBO, Disney and Showtime, to bring the most celebrated international movies and shows to India.
Game of Thrones is the world’s most avidly watched and anticipated show, with immense excitement and conjecture preceding every season premiere. Unfortunately, it is also the most illegally downloaded show in the world, despite the content being legally distributed, globally, by its creators.
(In India, the telecast was held back for some minutes, leading to angry comments by viewers in social media. Fans who subscribed tio Hotstar, got an error message on their screens saying, “Something went wrong – we’re working on it. Please try again in a bit”. Reacting to angry messages to the crash on Twitter and other social media, Hotstar CEO Ajit Mohan said, “As a service, we are proud that we have built a platform that can handle big surges in viewership. This morning, however, we faced an unprecedented surge in interest around the opening of the new season of Game of Thrones which resulted in a service disruption of about eight minutes.”)
Taking a humorous lens to this, Hotstar has launched a bold marketing campaign, intended to upend the behavior of illegal downloading. Titled ‘Torrents Morghulis’, a play on ‘Valar Morghulis’, as fans of the show will instantly recognize, the theme translates to ‘All Torrents Must Die’. The campaign lightheartedly highlights the trouble people put themselves through for finding and downloading illegal content, and how redundant these pains are in the current day and age where shows are readily available, at the user’s fingertips.
Leading with the promise of ‘Minutes after America, hours before Russia’, the campaign takes Torrents head on with 4 TV commercials, an outdoor campaign in key cities, and high impact digital activation. The films features two characters, one, who still labours through the process of procuring his content illegally, and another, who’s got a Hotstar Premium subscription and is able to enjoy the Game of Thrones experience the way it is meant to be – available to watch with the world, ad-free, unbeeped and unblurred.
Based on George R.R. Martin’s best-selling ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series, Game of Thrones has run for six extremely acclaimed seasons and holds the record for the highest Emmy wins for any Primetime TV show.
English Entertainment
ZEE5 UK partners Narrative Entertainment to add UK channels
Six FAST channels added as platform sharpens hybrid play in Britain
LONDON: ZEE5 UK struck a first-of-its-kind deal with Narrative Entertainment, bringing mainstream UK television channels onto an Indian streaming platform as it pushes to deepen its footprint in a crowded, mature market.
The partnership adds six of Narrative’s FAST channels to the service, including Great! Movies, Great! Romance, Great! Mystery and kids brands POP, Tiny Pop and POP UP, widening ZEE5 UK’s appeal across genres and age groups.
The move reflects a clear shift in strategy. ZEE5 UK is betting on a hybrid model that blends on-demand content with curated, always-on channels to drive discovery and increase time spent on the platform.
“This partnership represents a meaningful evolution in how we serve audiences in mature markets like the UK, where viewers are defined by habits, convenience and choice rather than geography or language alone,” said Parul Goel, territory head, Europe, Zee Entertainment. “By bringing trusted mainstream UK channels together with our premium originals, movies and kids’ content, we are building a more consumer-centric platform that simplifies viewing while increasing depth and relevance.”
Fateha Begum, commercial director, Narrative Entertainment, said the tie-up would fuel growth for both sides. “Our portfolio of quality programming, with such wide and enduring appeal, is a perfect complement to ZEE5 UK. This is a strong partnership that will support growth for both parties, and we share Zee Entertainment’s vision of an increasingly partnership-led future for the industry.”
ZEE5’s global library spans over 4,000 films and more than 500 originals, with over 130 new titles added annually. The addition of Narrative’s channels strengthens its kids offering and introduces genre-led linear experiences alongside its on-demand catalogue.
The deal also gives Narrative access to ZEE5 UK’s fast-growing user base, extending reach without diluting brand identity, while reinforcing ZEE5 UK’s network of more than 40 live channels.
As streaming wars intensify, ZEE5 UK is widening its playbook, blending content, convenience and partnerships in a bid to win screen time in one of the world’s toughest markets.
