iWorld
MPA’s AVB 2026: Streaming, social video and CTV drive Asia-Pacific video revenue growth
SINGAPORE: Forget the remote control. Asia-Pacific’s couch potatoes are voting with their thumbs — and the verdict is brutal for old-school television. Media Partners Asia’s annual assessment of the region’s video industry – the Asia-Pacific Video & Broadband 2026 (AVB 2026) report – reveals that between now and 2030, streaming and social video will hoover up nearly $24 billion in new revenue while traditional television haemorrhages $8 billion. Call it creative destruction, Pacific style.
The numbers tell a tale of two screens. Premium video-on-demand—the Netflixes and Disney+s of the world, plus ad-supported alternatives—will balloon by $12.5 billion to hit $52 billion by decade’s end. User-generated and social video, led by YouTube and ByteDance’s TikTok and Douyin empire, will pocket another $11.4 billion to reach $44.5 billion. That makes creator-led platforms the single fattest cash cow in the region’s screen economy. Linear television, meanwhile, continues its slow-motion car crash.
“Value is shifting decisively toward streaming, social platforms and CTV-led monetisation,” says Media Partners Asia chief executive Vivek Couto with admirable understatement. Winners, he reckons, won’t just pile up eyeballs. They’ll need to monetise “premium experiences”—think sports, high-quality local programming, and the surprise hit of micro-dramas—whilst deploying AI to squeeze costs across the content chain.
The Asia-Pacific screen industry will expand at 2.8 per cent annually through 2030, topping $196 billion. But here’s the kicker: every dollar of net growth comes from online video, which charges ahead at seven per cent a year. Traditional television? It’s running backwards.
India is staging a particularly dramatic coup. By 2030 it will overtake China as the region’s subscription king, boasting 358 milion individual subscriptions. Yet India’s total premium video revenue—subscriptions plus advertising—will still be 4.5 times smaller than China’s and 2.5 times smaller than Japan’s. Volume, it seems, doesn’t always mean value.
The big are getting bigger, too. The top 15 online video platforms gobbled up 58 per cent of total online video revenues in 2025. YouTube, ByteDance, Netflix and national champions like JioHotstar and U-NEXT are pulling away from the pack. China, Japan and India—the region’s three heavyweights—account for nearly 70 per cent of traditional television’s decline.
Connected television is the new battleground, turning living rooms into digital billboards. As CTV inventory expands, it’s pulling advertising dollars away from linear broadcasts and into algorithmic targeting. The future of video, it turns out, looks a lot like the internet: fragmented, data-driven and utterly ruthless.
Traditional broadcasters can read the writing on the wall—or rather, on the second screen propped next to the television set. The era of appointment viewing is toast. The streaming wars have come to Asia, and they’re not taking prisoners.
iWorld
JioStar revenue hits Rs 9,784 crore as cricket fuels 22 per cent growth
A surge in digital viewership and sports dominance fuels a blockbuster quarter for the media giant
MUMBAI: JioStar is batting on a flat pitch. The media titan’s fourth-quarter results for the financial year 2026 reveal a business scaling new heights, propelled by an unprecedented appetite for premium sports and digital-first storytelling.
Gross revenue for the quarter soared by 22.15 per cent to Rs 9,784 crore, up from Rs 8,010 crore in the third quarter. Operationally, the momentum was equally strong; revenue from operations climbed 21 per cent to Rs 8,372 crore. These figures underscore the firm’s successful integration following the Reliance and Disney merger, creating a dominant force in the Indian market.
The annual performance has been nothing short of a spectacle. Full-year gross revenue reached a massive Rs 36,248 crore, while annual profit after tax hit Rs 3,210 crore. This rapid expansion reflects JioStar’s ability to capture and monetise the massive growth in India’s media consumption.
Cricket proved to be the ultimate growth engine. The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 and TATA IPL 2026 delivered “record-breaking viewership” across both television and digital screens. The World Cup final alone drew a global peak concurrency of 72.5 million on JioHotstar, cementing its status as the nation’s premier streaming destination. On television, JioStar maintained a commanding 34.2 per cent viewership share, reaching a staggering 810 million viewers nationwide.
The digital numbers were just as impressive. JioHotstar averaged 500 million monthly active users, driven by consistent subscriber growth and innovative AI-led content discovery tools. These advancements are ensuring that JioStar remains at the cutting edge of the global “Race for Attention.”
With a firm grip on the country’s most valuable sporting rights and a rapidly growing digital footprint, JioStar is perfectly positioned for the future. It has built the ultimate content powerhouse—one that is ready to dominate the Indian living room for years to come.
