iWorld
Lionsgate Play celebrates one year anniversary, geares up to launch an exclusive app
KOLKATA: The global content leader and Hollywood studio house Lionsgate entered Indian OTT market in August 2019 with its premium streaming service product, Lionsgate Play. The brand launched its operations in the country by forming a strategic alliance with Vodafone Idea. With this collaboration, subscribers of Vodafone Play and Idea Movies and TV gained access to Lionsgate Play's enormous library of Hollywood content, which is populated by renowned franchises and films like La La Land, Twilight series, John Wick series, Wonder, Dirty 30, Knives Out, American Pie and many more.
Correspondingly, for unparalleled distribution, Lionsgate Play strategically formed alliances with other telecom partners having enormous reach in India like Airtel for Airtel Xstream app and Jio for JioFiberJioTV+ to give customers of the Indian telco access to Lionsgate’s portfolio of feature film content. Further, Lionsgate Play made itself available on JioTV+ and what began as a smart phone-led content revolution transitioned and expanded to encompass consumer televisions and other large screens in the home.
With the tremendous response received from the Indian viewers, Lionsgate Play launched Blockbuster Friday series – releasing one new film every Friday. Blockbuster Friday series showcased films from various genres such as horror, comedy, drama, action, thriller, sci-fi and romcoms. This resulted in the rise of viewership and increased stream time per user. Lionsgate Play also hosted Digital Movie Premiers of the Oscar nominated films like Knives out and Bombshell along with John Wick 3to name a few.In addition, Lionsgate Play dubbed many of its popular titles in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bhojpuri for regional-speaking cinema lovers, for them to enjoy Hollywood movies in their preferred language.
Now having tested the Indian waters and receiving great response from viewers, Lionsgate Play is all geared up to launch an exclusive app very soon. The app will house Cult Hollywood Movies, Popular Global TV shows and a few premium Original Indian shows that are being currently developed. All and all the company is further strengthening its offering as a premium content provider to Indian users.
Commenting on the partnership, Lionsgate South Asia managing director Rohit Jain said,“Lionsgate Play’s collaboration with telecom partners in India has witnessed surge in viewership with each passing month. As a premium Hollywood content brand, we introduced fresh quality content for our consumers and provided content as per demands whether it was for action thrillers or romcoms. We made sure there is content for everybody. We are ecstatic about Lionsgate Play’s success on these platforms. We will continue to invest in technology and expand our library for our userbase in India.”
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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.
