GEC Vs OTT Content: The Growth Trajectory of Entertainment Content

According to the FICCI Report 2024 on Media & Entertainment Industry growth, India produces 200,000 hours of content annually, which includes cinema, TV and OTT content.

Traditional vs Digital: Coexistence, Not Competition

Prediction is that while the traditional media that is TV & Radio will continue to attract around 300-400 million consumers, the Digital Media and OTT platforms will see exponential growth in the next few years, especially regional.

Also, it came out that digital is not eating the pie of the entertainment industry, rather adding to it. People are watching digital content like news, reels and YouTube content more. But it is also a fact that half of India still do not use social media, or visit cinemas, and a third of India’s population doesn’t watch television. Hence, opportunities of expansion are still huge.

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The Rise of Digital: Infrastructure, Content & Audience

Digital media’s focus on widening infrastructure, a huge storehouse of content, and a rapidly growing audience predicts that India is going to emerge as one of the leading nations in content creation and consumption on digital platforms.

Not just globally, the boundaries between regional and national content is lessening, and we will see regional flavours & local stories gaining mass appeal on the OTT (Over-The-Top) platforms, bringing the local audiences closer.

An important factor for this shift is accessibility and affordability of internet. It is also predicted that India will have around a billion active screens including mobiles by 2030 where people will be watching a variety of content.

 Reasons for Growing Digital Popularity

The reasons for growing digital content popularity, especially YouTube and other OTT platforms, can be summed up as:

• Growing popularity of YouTube, which has more than 467 million users till 2024. YouTube provides relatively free, multi-lingual and individually designed & curated content for viewers, which also includes some premium content from leading broadcasters and studios.
• Growth of social media, short formats and experiential content (gaming) has attracted a lot of consumers since 2023 and promises to reach 400 million users.
• Niche and high-quality content on OTT platforms have also played a major role in attracting affluent audiences and thus helping in the digital entertainment content to surge ahead of TV content. On the other hand, TV continued to lose affluent audiences in spite of still being the most favourite content giver.
• Lower economic audiences growing by 4% with easy access to smartphones helping in the consumption of digital content, especially entertainment in short formats, reels and content available on YouTube.
• A drop was also seen in the age group of 15-21 years who moved rapidly from television to OTT & other digital platforms.

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 Tech Drivers: Connectivity & Consumption

In addition to this, we also need to analyse other factors like:

• Increase in broadband connections
• Connected TV usage (smart TV with Wi-Fi support and not linear connections like set-top boxes)
• Adoption of 5G together with existing 4G dominating the internet usage among entertainment-viewing audiences
• Increase in smartphone users to 574 million in 2023
• Online video viewership increasing by 7% in the last one year
• Almost 3000 hours of fresh original content production, especially regional, by all online platforms
• Platforms continued to localise their content, especially OTT and digital content

 Vernacular Content: Breaking Language Barriers

It is thus predicted that OTT will break all language barriers in the coming few years. The share of vernacular content will increase by 55% with a focus on dubbing & subtitling.

• Drama, Crime, Action & Thriller will be the most viewed content digitally and on OTT.
• Demand for theatrical films, documentaries and fiction formats on OTT increased in 2023-24.
• Out of the OTT platforms, Amazon Prime Video reflected maximum usage by Indians.
• Netflix came close second, doubling its local content. India remained the 10th largest consumer of Netflix content globally.

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 Final Thoughts: A Unified Entertainment Future

In the end, it can be summed up that with increasing tech-trends, India-centric content consumers, as well as a new generation of tech-savvy people below 50, one can see an exponential growth in the M & E sectors, both of OTT and Connected TVs that have easy access to internet connection.

The aim of producers would be to create lasting stories and content that will be relatable to the audiences bridging cultures and nations.

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