Chennai: Online video content budget in India grew by 24 per cent last year to touch $3.6 billion, the highest in southeast Asia, said a survey.
Overall, investments across India, Korea and southeast Asia rose by 12 per cent to reach $10 billion, said a study titled ‘Asia Video Content Dynamics’ released by Media Partners Asia (MPA).
The study tracks investment, production and consumption for TV, film and online video across the countries mentioned above.
MPA attributes the 24 per cent surge in content investment in India to a major outlay on premium sports rights in 2018, including big price increase for IPL cricket, supported by continued growth and competition in TV.
Indonesia and Vietnam also generated double-digit growth in video content investment last year, although spending in Malaysia and the Philippines was flat.
Video budgets in Korea expanded at 7.2 per cent to $3.2 billion in 2018, buoyed by increased investment on movies and pay TV content characterised by rising film production costs and ever-improving production values, said the report.
“Compared with India, there is more balanced competition between TV majors in Korea, helping foster creative diversity,” said the study, explaining that Korea’s online video sector “is underweight, due to a thriving TVOD market that captures a large slice of audience time and spend”.
The study also said “Netflix is starting to drive growth in Korea’s online video sector however, with an eye on local, regional and global distribution”.
Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, ‘notable pockets of growth’ for video content investment included Indonesia, where budgets expanded 13 per cent in the period to $800 million and Vietnam, where investment grew 11 per cent to $500 million.
The report however cautioned that growth in TV entertainment in India is likely to soften this year due to new regulations on channel pricing and bundling introduced earlier this year.
Together, India and Korea accounted for more than 75 per cent of video content spend across the seven surveyed markets last year, the report said.
“The outlook remains healthy across much of Asia for the video content industry, with aggregate budgets scaling up in TV, film and online video across our surveyed markets. Much of this growth came from India and Korea, two large production dynamos with deep pools of talent,” said vice-president, MPA, Stephen Laslocky, in a statement.
“Investment in online video content continues to scale, up 60 per cent in aggregate to reach $858 million across the seven surveyed markets, powered by rapid growth in India, boosted by Amazon, Hotstar and Netflix in particular. Online video accounted for 14 per cent of all video content spend in India last year, the highest proportion of all our surveyed markets. Growth in online video budgets is also accelerating from a low base across much of south east Asia, although investment remains underweight in Thailand and Vietnam. Online video budgets are also constrained in Korea, due to the popularity of VOD (video-on-demand) services from incumbent IPTV (Internet protocol television) platforms,” Laslocky added.