JioCinema, the official streaming partner for the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023, logged record-breaking numbers during the more-than-two-month-long tournament, with over 12 crore unique visitors tuning in to watch the final match and the platform recording over 2.5 crore downloads in a single day. But now that the T20 league has concluded, it will be interesting to see how the platform makes the most of the momentum and keeps the viewers hooked. Experts suggest that JioCinema might not have the peak concurrent audience that it did during the IPL, but the new show launches and collaborations will help the platform retain its viewers as well as bring in new ones.

Retention Game

Giving an idea of its strategy to retain the IPL viewers, the platform, before the final match, made several significant announcements, including a subscription plan priced at Rs 999 per year and a new lineup of web series and films.

Decoding the platform’s content plan, Divya Dixit, Business Strategy and Growth Advisor, shares that JioCinema has done a few collaborations with various indian and international content partners like ALTT, Shemaroo, Voot, Warner Bros and NBC Universal to monetize and piggy back ride on the audiences that they have garnered through live streaming IPL. “The idea is on a larger vision of how to retain that audience and switch them over from being a free audience to a paid audience. I believe JioCinema will strive to do the same via multiple subscription plans, TVOD/SVOD as well as data packs.”

Nitin Menon, Co-Founder of NV Capital, believes that JioCinema will do whatever it takes to retain the viewers. “Given the fact that they have launched the platform with original titles like Asur and Bloody Daddy as well as a substantial chunk of licensing content including movies like Vikram Vedha, they will be able to retain their subscriber base as majority of their content is free.”

However, experts also say that the platform might not see the same traction that it witnessed during the IPL as viewers then spent three-four hours watching the matches but might not spend the same time in a day on watching the other content.

According to Karan Taurani, SVP, Elara Capital, AVOD platforms have relatively low retention power when compared to SVOD platforms where users pay a subscription fee. “Though JioCinema is building a strong content lineup, they can't have similar concurrent viewership seen during the IPL,” he says.

Taurani also shared that during the IPL, the amount of time spent by viewers on the platform was higher than the other months. “It may not be possible for the customer to watch content for such a long time every day. So definitely there could be a decline in terms of time spent and consumption. Around 50-60% drop in consumption patterns is definitely in the cards.”

He added that in terms of number of subscribers, it would matter too much because it's an AVOD platform. “The Monthly Active Users (MAUs) numbers may still be high but Daily Active Users (DAUs) might fall by 60%. MAUs will not see a sharp fall because a subscriber will log into the platform at least once a month to watch any original web series, but the daily consumption pattern will see a sharp fall,” he suggested.

Content is King

JioCinema has announced several new titles and collaborations.“They want to be the new kid on the block where OTT is concerned. And looking at the overall trend of Jio, I won’t be surprised if they start going exceedingly aggressive in the OTT market whether it’s originals or movies or even sports for that matter,” explains Menon.

Dixit added these collaborations allow them to work with a tighter ROI system and ability to scale up. “Since HBO has several eclectic shows that the metro audience have an interest in, they are sure to garner niche loyalty from there. Furthermore, Voot & Shemaroo offer Hindi as well as regional content and ALTT offers Hindi content; that acts as a stepping stone towards establishing Jio as one of the main OTT platforms in Bharat. The regional market has a huge potential for growth, and Jio will build on that. “

Subscription Model

With the subscription plan priced at Rs 999 a year, will JioCinema remain an attractive choice in the market and see more viewers coming in?

Taurani shared, “They've just started the SVOD mechanism. They're trying to target premium customers who want to watch content ad-free. HBO on Disney+ Hotstar accounted for not more than 1-2% of their paid subscriber base. The number of customers who will consume that content is very small and that market already is highly fragmented. We've got Netflix, Amazon and they've got a lot of other global content as well. So I don't see people paying Rs 1000 in large numbers specifically for these two catalogs. Definitely it could add some to the overall subscriber base but not in a big way. It will be a very small boost.”

Last month, the platform announced a partnership with NBCUniversal (NBCU) to bring thousands of hours of NBCU films and TV series to India. NBCU’s programming will live in a Peacock branded hub starting next month on JioCinema’s newly announced “JioCinema Premium” SVOD tier. Here, viewers will have access to first-run series like Young Rock and others.

Dixit Opined, “Indian audiences are definitely price- sensitive and JioCinema, in the longer run, will bring in that economy because they will behave like an aggregator along with offering exclusive content. An efficient pricing strategy is always a sure-shot way to enable a huge influx of subscribers especially when you rope in great data plans.”

Menon concluded that JioCinema is in for a long haul and they have all the intentions and the money power to be among the top players in the OTT market. “Incase they feel that they are not gaining the necessary traction as to the subscriber base, I won't be surprised to see them tweak the model to attract subscribers aggressively.”