Hotstar sees 63% of its total online entertainment consumption come from non-metro cities

• Hotstar crossed 400 million downloads, becoming one of the most downloaded apps in India.
• More than 40% of video consumption came from regional content.
• Hotstar registered 2X installs in 2019 vs 2018 with 555 installs per minute in 2019
• 63% of the total online entertainment consumption came from non-metros. Lucknow, Pune and Patna surpassed Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kolkata in video consumption.

Hotstar released India Watch Report 2019 today – a comprehensive study of online video consumption behaviour and trends. Based on Hotstar’s pan-India consumer base, the third edition of the report spoke about evolving content preferences, progressive gender shifts, and increasing accessibility continue to shape the modern Indian digital consumer.

Speaking about the report, Varun Narang, EVP & Chief Product Officer, Hotstar, said, “The accelerated growth of the Indian video entertainment ecosystem has had an unprecedented impact on the consumer. Today, the Indian consumer enjoys a plethora of content to choose from, has moved beyond metro cities, and 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.

Hotstar has seen a huge uptake from advertisers too. Speaking at the launch of the report on how the platform has been working on offering a combined solution to advertisers, Uday Shankar, President, The Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific and Chairman, Star and Disney India said, “We have started offering advertisers a combined solution that straddles across TV and Digital. And its not coming a day too soon because if viewers are moving or transiting from one stream to the other, why should the advertisers not have the same flexibility? I think that is going to be the path of the future. Those who have a presence only on digital will have to work on the digital mediums but those who are present only on TV will be constrained by that limitation. But we are at a position where we believe that technology will help us move in the right direction.”

He also spoke about the need for a robust measurement system for television. “One big limitation is the measurement system. The legacy TV measurement is not doing justice to how people are consuming content. There is not enough data. In today’s day and age where for Hotstar we can tell you what region is watching a particular content, it is still sample-based on TV. We need to move on and create a currency, which is scientific, robust, transparent and gives complete visibility to all the stakeholders.”

With over 400 million downloads, the platform registered 2X installs and 3X growth in consumption this year as compared to 2018. Moreover, regional content has grown to account for 40% of overall content consumption.

Interestingly, in 2019, men showed as high affinity to family drama than men, breaking the long-held belief that such genres don’t appeal to men. Women are also consuming more of entertainment digitally, making up 45% of the total entertainment consumption online.

Hotstar has also been working on turning its platform more interactive. During VIVO IPL 2019, 64 million viewers participated in Watch ‘N Play, twice as many as last year.

Some key highlights from the report:

• Hotstar crossed 400 Mn downloads, becoming one of the most downloaded apps in India: Hotstar registered 2X installs in 2019 vs 2018 with 555 installs per minute in 2019 and 3X growth in consumption in 2019 vs 2018.

• Sports streaming has reached unparalleled heights: 300 Mn+ platform reach during the VIVO IPL 2019, 25.3 Mn Live Concurrent Viewers during the India vs New Zealand ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 semi-final and 100 Mn reach crossed in a single day; Multiple times throughout ICC CWC 2019.
• Users don’t conform to stereotypes: 63% of the total online entertainment consumption came from non-metros. Lucknow, Pune and Patna surpassed Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kolkata in video consumption. Men have as high affinity to family drama as women; More than 40% viewers of Family drama are men. 45% of total entertainment consumption came from women (3.2X growth in video consumption by women compared to last year) and 41% of Game of Thrones viewers also watched Hindi family dramas.
• Regional languages travel the distance: More than 40% video consumption came from regional content. Tamil, Telugu and Bengali are the top regional languages. In fact, Bigg Boss Tamil is the highest watched entertainment show having beaten all the Hindi TV Shows
• Breaking new grounds on old fields: 4X growth in viewers for connected TV compared to last year and 7X growth in consumption for connected TV compared to last year
• Hotstar’s immersive and interactive game, Watch ‘N Play, recorded greater participation: During VIVO IPL 2019, 64 Mn viewers (2X that of VIVO IPL 2018) participated in Watch ‘N Play, 1.5X time spent by viewers who participated in Watch’N Play compared to those who didn’t, during VIVO IPL 2019 and approximately 6 billion emojis were used during VIVO IPL 2019, 44 Mn comments were shared live during VIVO IPL 2019.