On first inspection India is one of the most successful APAC markets after Australia for US scripted TV acquisitions but Show Tracker reveals that over 60% of these sales of US TV series this season have been vertically integrated by studios onto their own services in the country.
As it has been doing across all markets, Amazon is acquiring more US content than Netflix. With both services focusing primarily on their own Digital Original productions, they make up a fraction of the new TV acquisitions this season and are the only services actively acquiring in India that do not have a US Studio attached as an owner.
Both Sony and Lionsgate have a growing presence in what is an SVOD heavy market (only one premiere occurred on linear in the 2020/21 season). While both are able to take advantage of their own distribution catalogues they also acquiring from some third parties. Lionsgate Play acquired ‘Dr. Death’ from NBCUniversal, which it has also done for its sister service StarzPlay in many other markets across Europe and Latin America. Meanwhile Sony in fact acquired two third-party series from Lionsgate. Two otherwise StarzPlay bound shows - ‘Power Book II’ and ‘Hightown’ - were likely sold to SonyLIV ahead of the launch of Lionsgate Play at the end of 2020. ‘Power Book III’ has since gone on to premiere at Lionsgate Play, splitting up the spinoff franchise across multiple services in India.
Viacom 18 has diverted most of its recent US acquisitions away from its Pay TV channel Colors Infinity and instead to its SVOD service Voot Select, which launched as a paid tier for its AVOD Voot in 2020. Since then it has primarily capitalised on the relationship it has with ViacomCBS (who is a 49% owner in Viacom 18 against Network18’s 51%) as all US TV series premieres on the SVOD this season have come from the distributor.
Like Disney+ in many other markets, Disney+ Star has become the source for all TV shows from Disney Media Distribution this season, but it still continues to remain as India’s home of HBO in an agreement drawn up prior to Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox and by result Star India too. While the many homes of HBO restricts the international rollout of HBO Max in many markets, nowhere else is it quite as problematic as in India where so far a huge amount of content that would otherwise be exclusive to HBO Max is streamable on what should be one of Warner’s biggest rivals in the streaming war.
Warner has yet to establish a service presence in India, either through broadcast or SVOD. Outside of its historical engagement with Hotstar it has sold a number of shows to both Pay TV channel Colors Infinity and SVOD Amazon Prime in non-exclusive windows.
While this trend is becoming more prolific in markets such as China, in India it has solely been Warner that has managed to sell first a window to two services at once in this way in recent years. Both services aired each of these shows within mere days of each other, with either service potentially airing a show’s very “first” window. The negotiation was in no doubt largely helped by Colors Infinity losing its catch-up capability through Pay TV operator Tata Sky, meaning Amazon Prime would have no on-demand competitor for their acquired content.
This activity did not last much longer than one season however. ‘Manifest’ came back for a shared window on both services for its second season in 2020 but for other shows such as ‘All American’ and ‘God Friended Me’, Colors Infinity had to wait almost two years to air their second seasons after Amazon Prime. Warner is however responsible for the one new first window linear sale this season in India, selling ‘Katy Keene’ to Colors Infinity.
Overall premiere levels are down in India this season compared to previous seasons, for both US and UK shows, in a trend that is being seen across all markets as a result of COVID-19.
Over 75% of the premieres this season have been of the latest shows that first debuted in the 2020/21 season, in opposition to the trend seen in other markets such as Germany which is favouring the acquisition of older TV shows rather than the latest ones. This apparent healthy appetite for the most recent shows no doubt comes from the high levels of vertical integration in India, where studio owned services are less concerned with having to wait for older, cheaper television to become available for acquisition, unlike many of their third-party competitors.
Vertical integration is even somewhat prevalent for UK shows premiering in India, due to many having US studios attached for distribution. Sony Pictures has licensed two of its own shows, ‘Quiz’, commissioned by ITV, and ‘Anne Boleyn’, commissioned by Channel 5, onto SonyLIV while Lionsgate has done the same for ‘The Pact’. Originally commissioned by BBC One, it made its debut to Indian audiences via Lionsgate Play.
There has been limited activity from other more UK focused distributors. The only BBC Studios sale into India this season was ‘A Suitable Boy’ as part of a multi-market deal with Netflix while ITV Studios, alongside a similar deal with Netflix for ‘The Serpent’, sold two of its shows to Lionsgate Play (‘The Singapore Grip’ and ‘Little Birds’).
Although distributors of UK content will struggle to get their content onto huge services like Disney+ Hotstar which boasts over 40 million paid subscribers in India due to it currently only taking shows from Disney or HBO, emerging players like Lionsgate Play pose an opportunity as there is a clear interest in supplementing their originals with UK shows, a strategy studio owned SVODs are engaging in the US as well. Sony may be engaging in high levels of vertical integration at present in India but this is not conducive to their strategy worldwide, where they instead choose to act as an arms dealer for all services including Netflix and Amazon for three of the most nominated shows at this year’s Emmys. SonyLIV may yet open up to more third party buyers in the future in India, presenting another potential avenue for any distributors without a service presence in the region.
It is however obvious that vertical integration, alongside a studio SVOD dominance, is becoming a matter of fact for the US and UK TV acquisition market in India. Vertical integration is also on the rise in Europe and other markets but in India it is reaching a level of prevalence, perhaps only topped by the inevitable rollout of HBO Max once Warner’s volume deal ends with Disney+ Hot Star, that leaves little to no room for any truly local service to thrive in this space anytime soon.
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