iWorld
Online video growth zooms across Asia with internet TV consumption: MPA
MUMBAI: In a landscape still dominated by TV, the Asia Pacific online video industry seems to be on a path to double its share of video industry revenue ex-China from 9 per cent in 2017 to 20 per cent by 2023, according to analysis released today by Media Partners Asia (MPA).
The findings will be presented at the APOS Summit (April 24-26), an event for industry leaders in media, telecoms and entertainment, in Bali, Indonesia.
The analysis covers 12 markets: Australia, India, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and six key markets in Southeast Asia, with a focus on consumer and advertiser spend, content costs and market share across key clusters.
MPA executive director Vivek Couto said: “The growth of subscription and ad-supported video services from Amazon, Facebook, Netflix and Google will propel these FANG companies to a combined 63 per cent share of Asia Pacific online video revenues ex-China by the end of 2018.
Google-owned YouTube’s dominance is reflected by its 70 to 90 per cent slice of a large and fast-growing online video ad pie in Australia, Japan, Southeast Asia and India. In addition, Amazon and Netflix have scaled quickly with subscription video offerings in Australia, India and Japan but have a long way to go in Southeast Asia and Korea. There’s also a long runway for more growth in India.
Encouragingly, local and regional players with strong entertainment and sports IP together with, in many instances, large TV businesses, have invested in online video platforms to grab a bigger market share. This is especially true in India, Korea and Japan, although Southeast Asia lags.
The outlook remains in FANG’s favour, however, with its aggregate market share maintained at 62 per cent in 2023. Such scale will dramatically alter growth and investment dynamics across key markets. We see significant upside for local and regional media platforms with attractive IP and strong execution as well as the appetite and patience to invest over the long term across digital video.
Excluded from MPA analysis are potential all-in premium offerings from Disney, 21st Century Fox and Time Warner, which are likely to start gaining traction at some point over the next five years as global media consolidation accelerates.
FANG’s share could also be greater once Amazon Prime Video scales up in Australia and key markets across Southeast Asia. This is not yet included in the assumptions underlying MPA’s analysis.”
Key highlights from the MPA survey include:
FANG vs The Rest
The growth of subscription and ad-supported video services from Amazon, Facebook, Netflix and Google will propel the FANG companies to a combined 63 per cent share of Asia Pacific online video revenues ex-China by the end of 2018. Google-owned YouTube’s dominance is reflected by its 70 to 90 per cent slice of a large and fast growing online video ad pie in Australia, Japan, Southeast Asia and India. Amazon and Netflix have scaled quickly with subscription video offerings in Australia, India and Japan but have a long way to go in Southeast Asia and Korea. There’s also a long runway for more growth in India.
Encouragingly, local and regional players with strong entertainment and sports IP and, in many instances, large TV businesses, have invested in online video platforms to grab a bigger market share. This is especially true in India, Korea and Japan although Southeast Asia lags.
According to MPA, YouTube and Facebook combined will account for 72 per cent of online video advertising in Asia Pacific ex-China by 2023, versus 75 per cent at end-2018. In subscription-based online video, Amazon and Netflix’s combined share of the market should reach 35 per cent in 2018 and grow to 37 per cent by the end of 2023, although local and regional platforms are competing for and winning a share of incremental dollars in Australia, India, Japan, Korea and parts of Southeast Asia.
Content Investment
Total content investment in TV and online video across the 12 surveyed markets reached $23.1 billion in 2017, up 6 per cent year on year (yoy). MPA’s analysis includes movies, entertainment and sports. Content investment is expected to scale to $30.1 billion by 2023, a 5 per cent CAGR from 2018. Such growth is largely anchored to new dollars being spent across online video, which will account for 17 per cent of content investment by 2023 versus 10 per cent in 2018. MPA analysis focuses on premium video content creation across TV and OTT but excludes costs associated with the billions of hours being mass produced and uploaded on YouTube.
Content investment on TV is largely anchored to continued growth in sports rights, across Australia and India in particular, entertainment on free TV across Southeast Asia, albeit expanding at a more moderate pace, and pay-TV in India and Korea. Online video’s contribution to total TV and online video content costs will grow markedly in Southeast Asia, rising from 10 per cent to 20 per cent between 2018 and 2023. A similar growth trajectory is evident over the same period in Australia (13 per cent to 26 per cent) and India (10 per cent to 19 per cent).
The Overall Video Industry
Asia Pacific advertising and subscription fees across TV and online video grew 3.9 per cent ex-China in 2017 to reach $60 billion. TV and online media continue to grow at different speeds, as expected, with TV revenues inching up 1.2 per cent in 2017 while online video revenue expanded by 45 per cent to $5.2 billion.
MPA projects that total industry revenues will climb at a 3.8 per cent CAGR over 2018-23 to reach $77 billion by 2023, with online video scaling up by a 16 per cent CAGR to reach $15 billion in net terms by 2023 versus $7.1 billion in 2018. TV will only grow at a 1.8 per cent CAGR over the same period to reach $62 billion by 2023.
By 2023, the largest TV and online video markets in Asia Pacific ex-China will be: Japan ($27 billion), India ($17 billion), Korea ($9.2 billion) and Australia ($8.2 billion). Southeast Asia will contribute $11.1 billion by 2023. India will remain the fastest-growing video market, growing at an average annual rate of more than 8 per cent over 2018-23, followed by Southeast Asia with 5 per cent and Australia at 4.5 per cent.
Online Video
Online video advertising, dominated by YouTube to date, continues to grow at a stellar pace, increasing by 47 per cent in Asia Pacific ex-China to $3.6 billion in 2017 and projected by MPA to climb at a 17 per cent CAGR between 2018-23 to reach $10.7 billion by 2022. Online video subscription fees are growing rapidly from a very low base, up 41 per cent year-on-year in 2017 to reach $1.7 billion and forecast to grow at a 12 per cent CAGR from 2018 to more than $4 billion by 2023.
Japan and Australia will remain the leading markets for online video, contributing more than 55 per cent to Asia Pacific revenues ex-China in 2023. The third-largest market will be India, which will also be the fastest growing with a 26 per cent CAGR over 2018-23, with Southeast Asia the second-fastest with a 21 per cent CAGR over the same period.
Gaming
India’s new online gaming rules take effect today, banning money games and creating a regulator
The rules, in force from today, separate e-sports from gambling and impose jail terms and stiff fines on violators
NEW DELHI: India’s online gaming sector woke up this morning to a new reality. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules, 2026, came into force today, May 1st, turning a year of legislative intent into enforceable law. The message from New Delhi is blunt: e-sports and social games are welcome; online money games are not.
The rules operationalise the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming (PROG) Act, passed by Parliament in August 2025. Together, they represent the most sweeping regulatory intervention India has made in its booming digital gaming market, one that generated Rs 23,200 crore in 2024 and is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 11 per cent to reach Rs 31,600 crore by 2027. The stakes, in every sense, could not be higher.
A sector out of control
The urgency behind the legislation is not hard to find. An estimated 45 crore Indians have been affected by online money gaming platforms, with losses exceeding Rs 20,000 crore. Addiction, financial ruin, money laundering, and suicides have all been linked to the sector. Seventy-seven per cent of the market’s revenues came from transaction-based games, a figure that made regulators deeply uneasy.
The government’s response, effective as of today, is categorical. Online money games, whether based on chance, skill, or any mix of the two, are banned outright. So is their advertising, promotion, and facilitation. Banks and payment processors are barred from handling related transactions. Unlawful platforms can be blocked under the Information
Technology Act, 2000.
The penalties are designed to sting. Offering or facilitating online money games can attract up to three years in jail and a fine of up to Rs 1 crore, or both. Repeat offenders face a minimum of three years, extendable to five, with fines between Rs 1 crore and Rs 2 crore. Advertising such games carries up to two years in prison and fines of up to Rs 50 lakh, with repeat violations attracting higher penalties still. Cyber cell officers at state and union territory levels, including at police station, district, and commissionerate levels, are empowered to investigate offences.
The new sheriff in town
At the centre of the new framework sits the Online Gaming Authority of India, a digital-first regulator constituted as an attached office of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, headquartered in Delhi. It is chaired by the additional secretary of MeitY and includes joint secretary-level representation from home affairs, finance, information and broadcasting, youth affairs and sports, and law and justice, a deliberately multi-sectoral design built for a complex sector.
The authority’s powers are broad. It will maintain and publish lists of online money games, investigate complaints, issue directions, orders, and codes of practice, hear appeals on user grievances, and coordinate with financial institutions and law enforcement to ensure effective and timely action.
Its decisions on game classification are to be completed within 90 days, a time-bound commitment that industry players have welcomed after years of regulatory ambiguity. Classification can be triggered by the authority acting on its own initiative, by an application from a service provider, or by a notification from the central government. Games will be assessed on objective factors: whether stakes are involved, whether players expect monetary winnings, the revenue model, and whether in-game assets can be monetised outside the game. The outcome is recorded in a determination order specific to the game and provider.
E-sports gets its moment
While the crackdown on money gaming dominates today’s headlines, the rules also carve out a structured path for e-sports and online social games. Registration, required when notified by the central government, applies to all games offered as e-sports and is based on factors including risk to users, scale, financial transactions, and country of origin. A successful application yields a digital certificate of registration with a unique number, valid for up to ten years. Service providers must display registration details, designate a point of contact, comply with data retention requirements, and follow directions on facilitating payments.
Online money games are explicitly ineligible for recognition or registration as e-sports under the National Sports Governance Act, 2025. The separation is deliberate, and the industry has noticed.
Akshat Rathee, co-founder and managing director of NODWIN Gaming, called today’s operationalisation “encouraging,” pointing to publisher-led registration of esports titles and a time-bound determination process as creating “much-needed certainty for all stakeholders.” He added that the “continued emphasis on clearly separating esports from online money gaming is critical in preserving the integrity of competitive gaming as a skill-driven discipline.” He described it as “a proud moment to see official acknowledgement of the broader benefits of responsible esports and gaming, from building confidence, discipline, and teamwork to creating new career pathways for young talent,” and said the framework sets “a strong foundation for the ecosystem to scale in a more structured and globally competitive manner.”
Animesh Agarwal, co-founder and chief executive of S8UL, was equally bullish. “This clarity is critical in unlocking investor confidence and attracting multi-genre brands, while also enabling organisations to take a more long-term view, whether in investing in talent, scaling teams, or building globally competitive formats,” he said, adding that it “strengthens trust among audiences and mainstream stakeholders, positioning esports not just as a sport, but as a fast-growing youth entertainment category in India.”
But Agarwal urged caution on several fronts. There remains limited clarity around financial frameworks, particularly in how esports earnings are treated by banks and financial institutions. A well-defined pathway for the formal recognition or registration of esports teams is still evolving, as are structured player protections. He also called for smoother visa processes for esports athletes competing in international tournaments and for government support in developing infrastructure, including bootcamps, training facilities, and access to high-performance equipment across titles.
Vishal Parekh, chief operating officer of CyberPowerPC India, pointed to downstream effects on education and careers. “With formal recognition and policy backing, colleges and institutions are more likely to take the sector seriously, whether through dedicated esports infrastructure, training programmes, or curriculum integration,” he said, adding that this helps students view gaming as a viable career spanning roles across competitive play, content, game development, and allied industries. He noted that as esports gains prominence in global multi-sport events, the framework strengthens India’s position in international competitive gaming, and called on the ecosystem to provide the right infrastructure and access to high-performance hardware to unlock opportunities in talent development and job creation.
Protecting users, one safeguard at a time
The rules introduce a layered system of user protections calibrated to the risk profile of each game. These include age verification, age gating, time restrictions, parental controls, user reporting tools, counselling support, and fair-play and integrity monitoring. Service providers must disclose their safety features and internal grievance mechanisms when applying for determination or registration.
A two-tier grievance redressal system sits atop these safeguards. Users who are dissatisfied with a platform’s resolution can escalate to the authority within 30 days. The authority aims to dispose of such appeals within a further 30 days. A second appeal lies before the secretary of MeitY, who must also endeavour to resolve matters within 30 days. Enforcement proceedings will be conducted in digital mode wherever possible, with cases targeted for resolution within 90 days from receipt of a complaint.
Penalties under the framework are proportionate, taking into account gain from non-compliance, loss to users, the gravity of the offence, and whether violations are recurring. Mitigation efforts by service providers will also be considered when determining penalties. All penalties imposed under the Act will be credited to the Consolidated Fund of India.
The money follows the rules
For investors and founders, the implications are immediate and significant. Sagar Nair, head of incubation at LVL Zero Incubator, a 100-day sprint designed to accelerate early-stage gaming startups across India, argues that with real-money gaming now prohibited, capital will shift “away from transaction-driven models toward content-led, IP-driven, and global-first gaming businesses.” He acknowledged trade-offs: for operators with exposure to real-money formats, the market becomes more restrictive in the near term. But he argued that by clearly separating esports and non-money gaming from online money gaming, “India is positioning itself as a hub for responsible, creative, and scalable game development.” The opportunity, he said, is “to view India not just as a monetisation-first market, but as a talent, IP, and scale market,” adding that “for founders and investors willing to adapt, this shift could ultimately strengthen India’s position in the global gaming landscape.”
The government frames the wider impact in equally ambitious terms: a boost to India’s creative economy and digital exports, new career pathways for young people, protection for families from predatory platforms, and a stronger voice in global digital governance. India, it argues, offers a model for other countries grappling with the same tensions between gaming’s economic promise and its social risks, one that shows innovation and strong safeguards need not be mutually exclusive.
Whether the framework delivers on those promises will depend on enforcement, always the hardest part. But from today, the architecture is firmly in place: a regulator with teeth, a classification system with deadlines, penalties designed to deter, and a clear dividing line between games that build careers and games that destroy finances. For a sector that has grown fast and governed itself loosely, May 1st, 2026 is the day the free ride ends.
