DTH
Arabsat denies giving signal to BeoutQ, demands apology from FIFA
MUMBAI: A few days ago FIFA accused the Saudi Arabia’s satellite operator Arabsat of being involved in the act of transmitting pirated signals of the World Cup to BeoutQ. Arabsat president and CEO Khalid Balkheyour has strongly denied the involvement. Instead, Arabsat is demanding an apology from FIFA for its allegation.
In a letter it wrote to the body on 15 July, it said that seven independent satellite communications experts confirm that its satellite frequencies had not been used by BeoutQ. Balkheyour said, “Arabsat has always been confident that our satellite network has not been used by BeoutQ.”
“Nevertheless, we undertook a very costly investigation to eliminate any doubts and to provide evidence to share with FIFA and the world. Arabsat has been deeply offended and harmed by beIN’s and FIFA’s attacks,” he declared. “Now that FIFA has been proven wrong, it should apologise for making such offensive statements” he added.
BeoutQ users point their dishes to 26 degrees East, which either means an Arabsat slot, or its neighbour (at 25.5 deg East) Eutelsat 25B and its spacecraft partner Es’Hail 1. FIFA claims that BeoutQ was operating on Arabsat frequency 12341 MHz (and normally home to MBC ‘Pro Sports’ transmissions) for several World Cup matches and also 11996 MHz.
The experts showed that that frequency carried no video content at all dates and times mentioned by FIFA. Arabsat’s expert also added that blocking the frequency had no effect on BeoutQ’s pirate World Cup broadcasts, and that only legitimate broadcasts (e.g., BBC, Sky News and CNBC) were available on that. Saudi Arabia denies BeoutQ as an entity of the country.
BeoutQ users need to buy a dedicated ‘DreamBox’ satellite decoder receiver (for about 430 Saudi Riyals-[€98.60]). The marketing offer promises that buyers will also receive all of MBC’s (legitimate) sports channels and tournaments like Champions League, Premier League, Fifa World Cup’18, La Liga, Bundes Liga and many more.
DTH
Prasar Bharati’s WAVES earns Rs 2.9 crore in first year
Platform scales content, users but monetisation gaps limit revenue growth.
MUMBAI: Big waves, small ripples at least for now. When Prasar Bharati launched its OTT platform WAVES at the 55th International Film Festival of India in November 2024, it pitched a bold vision: a homegrown rival to global and domestic streaming giants, blending video, audio, gaming and commerce into a single digital ecosystem. Five months into FY2024–25, however, the platform’s revenue stands at just Rs 2.90 crore, a figure that underscores the gap between ambition and monetisation.
On paper, WAVES looks anything but modest. The platform has ingested 13,608 titles, totalling 9,495 hours of content, with over 13,000 titles already live. It has streamed more than 575 live events from the Mahakumbh Amrit Snan and the 76th Republic Day parade to the Hockey India League, Kabaddi World Cup and Mann Ki Baat while offering 74 live TV channels and 12 radio channels. With over 10 lakh registered users and more than 200 content partners onboarded, the scale resembles that of a fully operational streaming service rather than a pilot project.
The architecture supporting this scale is equally robust. Built under Prasar Bharati’s Central Archives vertical, WAVES runs on a cloud-based infrastructure with DRM, encryption and an integrated analytics dashboard. It includes dedicated units for content ingestion, quality control, publishing, graphics, marketing and billing, and is distributed across platforms such as OTTplay, Tata Play and BSNL. The offering extends beyond video to include audio-on-demand, e-games and even e-commerce via ONDC integration.
Yet, the numbers reveal a core disconnect. Despite its scale, WAVES generated just Rs 2.90 crore in a market where India’s OTT industry crossed Rs 23,000 crore in 2024. A key bottleneck lies in monetisation infrastructure: subscriptions cannot currently be purchased within the app and must be completed via an external website. In a mobile-first country where over 95 per cent of OTT consumption happens on smartphones, this extra step creates friction that most users are unlikely to overcome.
Ironically, content is not the problem, it is the platform’s biggest strength. Prasar Bharati holds one of the world’s richest broadcast archives, including 45,154 hours of digitised Akashvani programming and 35,723 hours from Doordarshan. For WAVES alone, over 3,800 hours of archival content have been made OTT-ready, including classics such as Ramayan and Shaktimaan, alongside rare cultural recordings and historical broadcasts.
There are early signs that this library holds commercial potential. Revenue from archival content licensing rose sharply to Rs 3.38 crore in FY24, up from Rs 67 lakh the previous year. Meanwhile, free digital platforms continue to drive massive reach, the PB Archives Youtube channel clocked 119.78 million views and added 4,02,000 subscribers in FY2024–25, crossing 1.7 million in total, while DD News has over 5.84 million subscribers.
That, however, presents a strategic dilemma. While free distribution builds scale, it also conditions audiences to expect content at zero cost making it harder to transition to paid models. WAVES, designed as a hybrid AVOD-SVOD platform with advertising and subscription layers, is yet to fully crack this balance.
The broader challenge is not technological but strategic. In an ecosystem dominated by platforms offering seamless payments, aggressive pricing and high-budget originals, WAVES is still bridging the gap between being a content repository and a commercially viable product.
For now, the platform reflects both promise and paradox. It has the scale, the content and the infrastructure but until monetisation catches up, WAVES remains less a revenue engine and more a digital showcase of what India’s public broadcaster could become.
