Sony’s OTT platform, SonyLIV, will boost its presence in the South India market significantly by the end of 2024, said Saugata Mukherjee, Head of Content at SonyLIV.
Mukherjee told businessline, “Unlike our competitors who have television networks penetrating in the South, we have had to build a complete content library for the South from scratch, which is why it has taken us time to expand there.”
Thus the platform will have a complete content slate for South Indian audiences by the end of 2024, he said.
SonyLIV has started betting on regional shows. Only in December, that it is going to launch 18 new titles in the three southern languages — Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. However, these investments have been strategic over time and Sony does not have a comprehensive library for the South market.
SonyLIV is probably the last amongst the Indian OTTs to expand to the South market.
Profitable operations
Earlier, Sony Head, NP Singh, had claimed that Sony is the only media company which has a profitable digital operation.
SonyLIV has a base of 33.3 million paid subscribers, a significant surge from seven lakh in early 2020, on the back of a string of hits, now commanding an annual average revenue per user of ₹573.
“SPNI has made significant investments in sports, including key cricket properties, UEFA (an annual club association football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations and contested by top-division European clubs) tournaments, World Wrestling Entertainment and Grand Slam Tennis, to name a few,” Singh added in his comments in May.