Likewise, the 90s and early 2000s kids and teens were always found playing various sports on the grounds be it in the scrounching heat of summer Or the rainy days. The Gen Z today, are always found sitting in the corner of their rooms, binge watching several movies and series. Now as we got the reference to the title. Let’s take a look at some proofs of it;

According to Deadline’s september 2020 report, “NETFLIX has thrived during COVID-19, adding about 26 million global subscribers in the first half of the year to reach a total of 193 million. The streaming giant has fended off competition from a handful of multi-billion-dollar services coming to market over the past year, including Disney+, Apple TV+ and HBO Max.

According to Omdia (which excludes subscriptions from bundled offers), as of December 2020, Disney+ Hotstar had 18.69 million subscribers, a big jump from 5.36 million in 2019. Amazon Prime Video had 5.83 million subscribers — up from 4.34 million in 2019. The subscriber count of Zee5 and SonyLiv stood at 2.7 million (up from 1.99 million) and 1.81 million (up from 6.5 lakh), respectively, in 2020.

Are you a contributor to these numbers too?. Mostly yes right. OTT platforms, the numerous released web series and the movies has been the biggest buzz of year 2020. While not being permitted to move out of their homes, continue to work Or study properly due to closure of everything, all what people seemed to be left with to entertain themselves was their smartphones, laptops, TVs etc. Some considered this free time, sitting home and watching movies as freedom. Others saw them out of their boredom. Meanwhile the lack of fresh and entertaining content on TV due to lockdown, the slowly growing trends of OTT took a leap up to tremendous success all at once. And thereby arrived a wave of opportunities for the VOD Providers. Each and every every app started collaborating with makers to spruce up their libraries with better shows than competitors and gain as much paid subscribers as possible, leading to a terrific kick start to a era of Digital media. Not only are the platforms realising the need for more and better content but also the demand for the originals hit the grounds due to heavy competition. Netflix, which is the most premium OTT platform in India, charging Rs 499 per month, invested Rs 3,000 crore on Indian originals in 2019-2020. The time spent by each user on these shows increased rapidly, which made every app to double the efforts for attracting more and more rush their way.

Are These Investments Worth It?

According to reports and speculations future of OTT only seems to get better with time. As all the individuals be it kids, teens or adults with access to high connectivity, smartphones and other smart electronic devices and especially thousands of options of releases to watch everyday are only expected to get more and more addicted to this digital media. Being known to western culture, youngsters today are more into the concepts of privacy, space and being happy by themselves. Rather, than playing outdoor games with friends and being active around. And of course the lockdown restrictions and smartphone fever is hidden from none, which has contributed to growth of desirability of audience towards OTT. Along with that curbing of Theatre releases, also influenced bigger production houses to find their way to exploring VoD platforms. Another important feature here is unavailability of Censore board for OTT yet, which gives users the absolute right to choose what kind of creatives they want to watch. Having options of so many different platforms, with a vast choice of seamless content available on every platform, at reasonable prices, on any device of your choice within comfort of home or at every possible place and at any point of time in the day is and will be all what a person, especially the ones trapped in lockdowns could ask for.

Thus, Current scenarios indicate the most wide range of upcoming opportunities to both foreign and local VoD providers, proving it to become a long term market trend. While the maitained leadership to be expected from the platforms providing the most user friendly features in their apps and sites along with the best content as per the viewers’ personal choices.