DTH
Pay-TV revenue to grow at 7 per cent CAGR over 2020-25: MPA report
New Delhi: India is among a handful of countries where there is great scope for further penetration of television. Since the turn of the millennium, pay-TV connections have more than doubled in Indian households, though data in the public domain indicates there still remain an additional 100 million homes to penetrate.
Now, a new report published by Media Partners Asia (MPA) forecasts India’s pay-TV industry will grow at roughly seven per cent CAGR between 2020-25. The growth will be accompanied by a significant uptick in the total industry revenues, including subscription and advertising which will reach $12.3 billion by 2025, said the industry analysts.
The report, entitled India Pay-TV Distribution 2021 released on Monday, predicts that more than 96 per cent of India’s pay-TV homes will be digitalised by 2025. The total pay-TV subscribers will further expand from 127 million in 2020 to 134 million during the period.
Distribution dynamics
The MPA has pegged India’s active DTH homes to grow from 58 million in 2020 to more than 68 million in 2025. Meanwhile, cable’s share of pay-TV subscribers will decline from 54 per cent in 2020 to 46 per cent by 2025; IPTV will pick up a small share after rolling out later in 2021.
MPA India vice president Mihir Shah said, “Robust backend systems, the ability to offer consumers flexibility in choosing channel packages under NTO and the exit of leading private channels from DD Free Dish helped the DTH pay-TV sector grow even after the new TRAI tariff regulations came into effect.”
Going forward, DTH will be the key driver of growth fulfilling the needs of the majority of new TV households entering into the pay-TV ecosystem. “Premium cable subscribers in urban centers remain vulnerable to churn as uptake of quality fiber-based broadband services including IPTV grows in affluent pockets of urban India,” he added.
Monetisation, investment and the outlook for broadcasters
The total pay-TV industry revenue, including subscription and advertising, had declined 10 per cent year-on-year in 2020 to $8.9 billion as the economic downturn post-Covid eroded advertising. The projections show that the recommencing of fresh content and live sports together with improvements in consumer and economic sentiment will lead to a sharp recovery in 2021. Pay-TV advertising will grow at 12 per cent CAGR over 2020-25 after a 25 per cent contraction last year.
During 2020, pay-TV broadcasters generated $4.4 billion in total revenue (62 per cent from advertising and 38 per cent from subscription), down 17 per cent year-on-year. A sharp recovery is expected over the next two fiscals with the channel business and advertising primarily driving this expansion.
According to Shah, TRAI’s heavy spate of regulations in recent years depressed investment in pay-TV content, which could have a detrimental impact on the quality of content available for the mass market.
“We expect that more consolidation will play out in the broadcasting industry as recent tariff amendments force incumbent broadcast networks to recalibrate existing channel portfolios. The economics of less popular channels and several niche channels are no longer viable. A new and less draconian regulatory framework will help revitalise content creation in the pay-TV industry while also helping to bolster pricing power for pay-TV platforms,” he stated.
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.
