More than 40% of family drama viewers in India are men, refuting the long-held assumption that such genres don’t appeal to men, according to a new report by Hotstar.
Meanwhile, women are also consuming more of their entertainment digitally, making up 45% of the total entertainment consumption online.
The Star India-owned video streaming platform recently released the third edition of its India Watch Report, which looks at online video consumption behaviour and trends. The company reported that it recently crossed 400 million downloads of its app and recorded a 1.5x jump in video viewers.
The report also found that non-metro cities are outstripping metros in terms of video consumption, accounting for 63%. Lucknow, Pune and Patna have surpassed Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kolkata in video consumption. In addition, regional content has grown to account for 40% of overall content consumption, with Tamil, Telugu and Bengali the top regional languages.
In addition, 63% of news consumption comes from people in the age group of 15-34. The report found 10x growth in online video consumption of news and 3.5x growth in news consumption per user compared to last year with Delhi the biggest consumer of news in India.
Sports content continues to be popular in the country. The platform’s reach during this year’s Indian Premier League (IPL) went past 300 million viewers, while 25.3 million live concurrent viewers watched the ICC World Cup semi-final between India and New Zealand.
Besides cricket, football saw 2.1x more consumption of Premier League as compared to last year while Kabaddi saw 2.3x more consumption of VIVO Pro Kabaddi. Football is popular in South India and East India, while Kabaddi is most-watched in Uttar Pradesh and South India.
Interestingly, online viewing is transitioning from a passive experience into an immersive and social one. During Vivo IPL 2019, 64 million viewers participated in Watch ‘N Play – a game that runs under the video stream and lets the viewer engage with the match – twice as many as last year.
“The accelerated growth of the Indian video entertainment ecosystem has had an unprecedented impact on the consumer,” Varun Narang, executive vice president and chief product officer, Hotstar, said in a statement.
“Today, the Indian consumer enjoys a plethora of content to choose from, and it isn’t limited by gender or language. More importantly, this growing accessibility has opened doors to new thoughts and ideas that are shaping a stereotype-defying consumer,” he added.
Hotstar, Best Media Info, Hindustan Times, Entrepreneur India
