iWorld
India to see fourfold increase in OTT services by 2019: Calvin Koh
MUMBAI: According to the FICCI-KPMG Media and Entertainment 2014 report, with 168 million TV households, India is the second largest TV market after China. However, there is scope for further growth in India’s broadcast industry.
Concurring with the same is Singapore Exhibition Services assistant project director (communication events) Calvin Koh, who was in the city to speak about the upcoming Broadcast Asia 2015 Summit. The Summit will be held from 2-5 June 2015 at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.
Speaking to Indiantelevision.com, Koh says that the Indian broadcast industry is undergoing a big transformation. He informs that by 2019 India will see a fourfold increase in Over The Top (OTT) platforms as there will be major push for OTT service everywhere. “Sports broadcasting will be another catalyst for this change. TV is going to be everywhere, not just limited to television sets,” he says. Broadcast Asia 2015 will have its spotlight this year on a TV Everywhere! Zone.
With hurdles coming in way of a smooth digitisation process in India, Koh is still hopeful. “I don’t expect a sudden overhaul. India has the potential for increasing consumption for TV. Regardless of the hurdles, we need to see trendsetters in the broadcasting space,” he says.
He went on to explain that broadcasters today need to be present on multiple screens. With regards to sports broadcasting, the executive with 18 years of experience in the industry, remarks sports broadcasting will be a strong driver for content consumption in India. “India is doing well and we are confident,” he says.
For Koh, TV serials and films still are largely untapped markets and have strong potential to drive growth and reach audiences. He equates the growth for Bollywood films in the same manner as it worked for the successful proliferation of Korean dramas in non Korean markets.
When asked to list challenges faced by the Indian broadcast space, Koh says, “Content is of concern.” He says broadcasters and content creators need to come up with relevant stories that sell.
“Good content should also be materialized and repurposed to be consumed on tablets and mobile screens. With more broadband options, and faster upload times, there is variety and options of TV everywhere. Media analytics also help advertisers who views what where and at what time, which is essential,” he says.
With regards to OTT platforms and broadcasters, Koh says that they need to understand consumer behavior. “While there is no lack of potential, investments in infrastructure by the two and content should go hand in hand,” he concludes.
Gaming
India’s broadcasters say no to Fifa World Cup 2026
Fifa has slashed its asking price by 65 per cent but India’s broadcasters are still not buying
MUMBAI: The world’s biggest sporting event cannot find a single taker in the world’s most sports-mad nation. Fifa’s television rights for the 2026 World Cup remain unsold in India, and the clock is ticking loudly.
To shift the property, world football’s governing body has already swallowed hard and cut its asking price from $100m to $35m, bundling in the 2030 edition as a sweetener. It has not worked. Indian broadcasters have looked at the offer, done the sums and quietly walked away.
The reasons are brutally simple. The 2026 tournament, co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, kicks off in a time zone that turns India’s primetime into a graveyard shift. Most matches will air between midnight and 7am IST, a scheduling catastrophe for advertisers chasing mass reach. The 2022 Qatar edition was a gift by comparison, with matches dropping neatly into Indian evenings. North America offers no such luxury.
The market itself has also changed beyond recognition. The merger of Star India and Viacom18 into JioStar has gutted the competitive tension that once sent sports rights prices soaring. Where rival bidders once slugged it out, there is now a single dominant buyer, and it is in no hurry. JioStar has valued the rights at roughly $25m, a full $10m below Fifa’s already-discounted floor price. That gap has so far proved unbridgeable.
Broadcasters are also nursing a ferocious cricket hangover. Between 2022 and 2023, Indian media houses committed well over $10bn to cricket rights alone, covering IPL, ICC events and BCCI domestic fixtures combined. After a binge of that scale, appetite for a football package that delivers a fraction of the ratings, in the dead of night, is close to zero.
The economics of football broadcasting make the maths even harder. Cricket, with its natural breaks every few overs, is an advertiser’s paradise. Football offers a 15-minute halftime and precious little else. Recovering a nine-figure rights fee from a single half-hour ad window is a stretch at the best of times. These are not the best of times: the Indian government’s tightening grip on real-money gaming and gambling advertising has vaporised a category that once underwrote the economics of big sporting events.
Nor is the World Cup an anomaly. Indian Super League valuations have cratered. English Premier League rights have softened across successive cycles. The cooling of football as a broadcast commodity in India is structural, not cyclical.
With the tournament opening on 11th June, Fifa is running out of road. It may yet blink and meet JioStar at $25m. Or it may go direct, streaming the entire tournament on its own platform, Fifa+, or cutting a digital deal with YouTube, and hoping that a generation of Indian football fans finds its way there without a broadcaster to guide them.
Either way, the beautiful game’s Indian chapter is looking decidedly ugly.
