Amazon Prime Video's fresh line-up is aimed at attracting new audiences

Amazon Prime Video's new line-up speaks of a streaming service sure of where it is and where it wants to go

This report has been updated to correct an error in 'THE BIG PLAYERS' chart
Two hundred years after the Apocalypse, people who live in luxury fallout shelters are forced to return to the irradiated hellscape their ancestors left behind. 
 

They are shocked to discover a complex and violent universe.
 

Fallout, a show based on a post-apocalyptic role-playing video game, will premiere worldwide on Amazon Prime Video this April. It is one among the 69 series and films — original and licensed —announced last week at a star-studded event in Mumbai by Amazon Prime Video, India. That is up from 40 titles in 2022.
 

“India has the largest slate of local original content outside the US,” says Kelly Day, vice president, international, Amazon Prime Video.
 

Prime Video, part of the $575 billion online retail giant Amazon, has more than 200 million members in 210 countries. At an estimated 22 million users, India is the largest Prime Video using country outside of the United States (78 million). Not all of them are users of the video service; they are essentially shoppers who sign on for free shipping and get a lot of other goodies, such as video and music.
 

Though the company does not share revenue or subscriber break ups, Media Partners Asia (MPA) estimates Prime Video’s India revenues at Rs 2,500 crore in 2023 (see table). The pay and ad revenue for the entire Indian streaming market is estimated at Rs 25,000 crore.
 

Swelling kitty
 

According to Ormax Media data, some of the most watched shows of 2023 (Farzi, Dahaad) and films (Bawaal) came from the Prime Video kitty.
 

“Our biggest success has been driving Indian content internationally. Indian programming trended in the Top 10 on Prime Video worldwide for 43 out of the 52 weeks of 2023,” says Gaurav Gandhi, vice president, APAC and MENA.
 

Farzi, Indian Police Force, Poacher, The Family Man, Made in Heaven and others have found audiences in many countries. The line-up for the next two years includes new seasons of old favourites, such as Paatal Lok, Mirzapur, Suzhal-The Vortex, and Panchayat.
 

It also offers an insight into Amazon Prime Video’s India strategy.
 

“In any given week in 2024, they can target key demographics through their content choices. They have horrors like Khauf, action like Citadel: Honey Bunny, true crime like Daldal, unscripted like Follow Karlo Yaar, documentaries like In Transit or The Great Indian Code. All of this content ticks boxes in particular ways. And they have a range of Telugu, Tamil and Kannada films.

It is covering all bases,” says Daoud Jackson, senior analyst, media and entertainment, at United Kingdom-based Omdia.
 

That is what Prime Video has been doing for the last few years, on programming, product, and distribution.
 

Covering all the bases
 

Each genre Prime is now investing in brings different audiences into the service.
 

“Younger customers who are more on social, get international IP (intellectual property). We are seeing a lot of our US shows like Reacher, Jack Ryan, work very well in India. That is why Fallout is big for us,” says Gandhi.
 

Adapting gaming IPs to the big or small screen has made for a booming business in recent years. The Last of Us, a 2013 game, became a huge hit on its HBO release in 2023. Dungeons and Dragons, a 1974 game released as a film last year. The idea, across streaming and studios, is to get a global audience of young adults who are spending more time on Tik Tok and social media.
 

The young adult is one layer. In the last few years, Amazon Prime Video has commissioned and launched international crossovers, such as Citadel, invested in Tamil and Telugu shows, and in sports — a genre it believes has a huge fan following. It picked up New Zealand cricket in November 2022 even as it was picking up rights to German, English, and American Football leagues.
 

In November 2023 came FanCode, a sports channel that streams cricket, football, and rugby, among other sports. Why not the Indian Premier League (IPL), the most expensive and popular sports property in India?
 

“Sports has to make economic sense. There has to be acquisition, engagement, and retention value of sports audiences. We evaluate each property, country by country,” says Gandhi.
 

Then there are the 20-odd channels, such as BBC, or services like Lionsgate and Hoichoi, that Prime Video began offering from 2021 onwards. They ride on its billing and distribution relationship with users.
 

One of the big programming punts it made in 2022 is TVoD, or transaction video-on-demand. Think of it as a pay-per-video kind of offering, using which you can rent films such as The Devil Wears Prada (2006) or Notting Hill (1999) or Oppenheimer (2023), among 6,000 other titles.
 

“It is the best form of sachetising video,” says Gandhi. More than 75 per cent of these 6,000 films are rented at least once a month. And 95 per cent of the PIN codes in India are covered by the cities and towns where people rent them from.

Doesn’t this smorgasbord of offering dilute the Prime brand?
 

“To deliver on the promise of great selection we have adopted a lot of different business models,” says Day.
 

An MPA report says much of this multiplying was to tackle slowing subscriber growth in 2022. It points to the product and distribution changes, such as Prime Lite or Amazon miniTV (a free app), that cut across price and technology points.
 

Gandhi reckons the service has to cut across cities, towns, demographics, and genres if it has to have a significant play in a market as heterogeneous as India. These new tiers have driven incremental subscriber growth for the platform, says the MPA report.
 

That explains the investment into a huge slate this year. Nothing apocalyptic about streaming growth for now.