Paid subscriptions in India drop by 2 million in 2023, slow growth in revenue

Paid subscriptions stood at 97 million, across 43 million households in India last year (Representative image)

Premium content available for free and rising subscription fatigue led to a drop in India’s paid video subscriptions by two million last year, resulting in the segment’s growth slowing down.

Paid subscriptions stood at 97 million, across 43 million households in India last year versus 99 million paid subscriptions across 45 million households in 2022.

Cricket properties, which are premium content for the streaming space that was made available for free, became one of the reasons for slow growth in video subscription revenue to 6 percent to Rs 72.6 billion from Rs 68 billion in 2022, according to the FICCI EY report released on March 5.

One of the largest streaming services, Disney+Hotstar saw a drop of 19 million paid subscriptions because of premium content available for free. This affected the overall number of subscriptions significantly.

Paid OTT subscribers are estimated to be between 86 million and 108 million individuals, lower than 2022 estimates due to the fall in paid subscribers and a crackdown on password sharing by certain platforms.

Over the top (OTT) platforms that are aggregating content of various other streaming platforms are likely to see more traction. This is because a rising subscription fatigue to multiple platforms has created a space for OTT aggregators, allowing users to discover and view streaming content from multiple OTT apps in one place.

Players in this space include Amazon Prime Video Channels, Tata Play Binge, OTTplay, Times Group, and Airtel Xstream.

These platforms offer distribution scale to smaller OTT apps focusing on regional or international content, and who are looking to create visibility and build reach in the country.

The number of households having access to video OTTs will increase to 65 million by 2026, with 138 million subscriptions, averaging approximately 2 subscriptions per household, the report noted.

While many platforms are going the advertising video on-demand route (AVOD), the report pointed out that ad-supported OTT models cannot be sustained due to the high cost of premium content. It is expected that more platforms will roll-out subscription products, or subsidise costs through bundling with data, e-commerce, among others.

Large platforms can look at launching more affordable packages like or aggregators bring the bundled price down, which is comparable to TV. In this scenario, it is estimated that the number of households paying for one or more subscription video on-demand (SVOD) service can reach 100 million by 2026.

Bundling of various OTT platforms by internet service providers (ISPs) and telcos will gain scale. However, the customer will need to be provided with the choice of choosing different OTT platforms to bundle.