iWorld
Amazon MX Player sharpens India’s streaming appetite in 2025
India’s streaming audience stopped grazing in 2025 and started choosing with purpose. As viewing shifted from endless scrolling to deliberate selection, Amazon MX Player emerged as one of the year’s biggest winners, marrying familiar franchises with fresh formats and pushing free, mass-market streaming to new highs.
The platform began the year by laying out its ambition at StreamNext, unveiling a slate of more than 100 titles, including 40 Hindi originals, all streaming free. That strategy paid off. Long-running franchises once again anchored viewership, led by Ek badnaam aashram season 3 part 2. Starring Bobby Deol as Baba Nirala, the series crossed 250 million viewers and sat firmly atop Ormax Media charts as India’s most-watched show, puncturing the idea that only paid platforms can deliver scale.
Returning titles such as Half CA season 2, Hunter season 2 with Suniel Shetty and Jackie Shroff, Jamnapaar season 2 and Gutar gu season 3 reinforced the scripted slate, blending high drama with emotional realism. The platform also flexed its range with Bhay: the Gaurav Tiwari mystery, a restrained psychological thriller starring Karan Tacker and Kalki Koechlin that leaned on mood and investigation rather than spectacle.
Reality programming, however, became the year’s breakout engine. Formats grew sharper and more idea-led, turning into social conversations rather than background noise. Rise and fall, hosted by Ashneer Grover and featuring Pawan Singh, Arjun Bijlani, Kiku Sharda and Dhanashree Verma, drew more than 500 million views and ranked among India’s top two reality shows, according to Ormax. Hip hop India season 2, judged by Remo D’Souza and Malaika Arora, topped Ormax reality rankings for 11 consecutive weeks between January and June, while competitive shows such as Battleground and I-POPSTAR deepened the genre mix.
Fresh originals also found space to grow. Creator-led titles such as First copy with Munawar Faruqui and Aukaat ke bahar featuring Elvish Yadav brought new voices to the platform, while youth-focused shows like Lafangey and Gamerlog captured the awkward churn of early adulthood. Alongside domestic content, Amazon MX Player expanded MX Vdesi into one of India’s largest libraries of international dubbed programming, with more than 200 titles across Korean, Turkish and Mandarin, and the arrival of anime hits such as Demon slayer.
The scale attracted brands. Samsung, boAt, Lux Cozi, Haier and Sprite were among the marquee advertisers backing the platform, underlining its appeal as a mass-reach destination. By the end of 2025, Amazon MX Player had crossed 1.4 billion app downloads and reached 250 million monthly active users. With availability spanning Prime Video, Fire TV and the Amazon Shopping App, it closed the year not just as another streaming service, but as a fixture of India’s viewing habit.
In a crowded OTT market, Amazon MX Player’s bet was simple and effective. Make it free, make it familiar, then make it bold. In 2025, that formula made India stream.
iWorld
Banijay Asia’s The 50 tops OTT charts with 8.1 million JioHotstar views
Reality competition becomes most watched show on JioHotstar in debut week.
MUMBAI: Fifty contestants walked into a palace, but millions of viewers showed up for the drama. Reality competition The 50, produced by Banijay Asia, has emerged as the most watched show on JioHotstar, clocking 8.1 million views in its debut week. The figure, reported by Ormax Media, places the show at the top of the OTT viewership charts and marks a strong opening for the digital reality format.
Adapted from a popular French format, The 50 brings together 50 personalities from television, digital platforms, music and reality shows inside a grand palace setting. Over the course of a 50 day competition, participants form alliances, compete in unpredictable tasks and navigate eliminations as the field steadily narrows.
Guiding the game is a mysterious figure known as The Lion, an unseen game master whose voice introduces twists, challenges and strategic turns throughout the show, adding an extra layer of suspense to the contest.
What distinguishes The 50 from typical reality competitions is its audience driven prize structure. Instead of the winner taking home the final reward, the prize is awarded to one of the winner’s registered followers through the show’s dedicated app. The mechanism effectively turns viewers into participants, allowing fans to have a direct stake in the outcome.
The contestant lineup features a mix of television actors, reality stars and digital creators, including Karan Patel, Urvashi Dholakia, Divya Agarwal, Mr Faisu and Dushyant Kukreja, each bringing their own fan following to the show.
With its blend of celebrity personalities, strategic gameplay and interactive viewer participation, The 50 has quickly carved out a strong foothold in India’s digital entertainment landscape. Its 8.1 million views in the opening week underline the growing appetite for large scale reality formats designed specifically for OTT audiences.
