As perhaps the largest remaining market not yet saturated by subscription video-on-demand streaming services, India is heating up as a nexus of investment for Disney, Netflix and Amazon, as each tries to spur growth for their respective SVOD platforms and get them to this happy, Nirvana-like place known as "scale."

Data just released by UK-based research company GlobalData Technologies shows that India currently has household penetration for subscription video-on-demand services of less than 30%.

Subscribing households will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 16.2% to surpass 40% by 2026, the research company estimates, while total SVOD revenue in India will grow at a CAGR of 15.5%, expanding from $1.3 billion in 2021 to $2.7 billion in 2026. 

“The Indian SVOD market is on an accelerated growth path thanks to the availability of high-speed broadband services, growing smartphone penetration, and widespread popularity of OTT content among the younger population," said Hrushikesh Mahananda, telecom research analyst at GlobalData. 

Adding 8 million subscribers in the Subcontinental region in the first quarter, Disney+ Hotstar leads the market, Mahananda said. 

The Disney-owned service's growth, he added, "can be attributed to the company’s wide, distinct pool of multilingual local and original content library, competitive pricing, and exclusive coverage rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL), one of the biggest sporting events in the country."

Well, not so fast. Disney just lost out on the bidding to renew IPL streaming rights for Disney+ Hotstar, with Viacom18, a Mumbai-based joint venture between Paramount Global and Reliance Industries' TV18, paying $3 billion for the prize. 

But Amazon just unveiled a slate of 41 local productions in India. 

And for Netflix, which is also pouring money into the region, India has been one of the company's brightest glowing embers of growth as it deals with a larger global customer and revenue recession. 

“There has been a remarkable change in the viewing habits of Indian consumers in recent times with traditional pay-TV services losing subscriptions, while binge-watching shows on various OTT platforms is becoming more common," Mahananda added. "While SVOD services have managed to gain a sizeable viewership in urban areas, the rural markets will provide a large untapped market potential for OTT players in the coming years.”

Crown Media sees a market in India for sappy romantic dramas frequently packaged around American country music stars. 

The company's Hallmark Movies Now subscription streaming service will now be offered by local entertainment review and recommendation platform OTTplay.

“Our partnership with OTTplay is an exciting opportunity to expand our international footprint as we bring Hallmark Movies Now to India for the first time,” said Francisco Gonzalez, senior VP of international distribution for Crown Media. “Indian audiences now have a one-stop destination to access a curated mix of signature Hallmark content.”

Also: Netflix Sees Green Shoots in India

The Hallmark-branded niche SVOD service passed the 1 million subscriber mark domestically back in fall 2020, and Crown hasn't seemed to offer an update since that time.

Regardless as to how customer growth is going, Crown Media seems intent on competing in the huge, largely unsaturated Subcontinental market, which has 1.38 billion potential customers, many of whom haven't yet started streaming video.

 “Through OTTplay Premium subscriptions, our aim is to take a leap in our journey of democratizing the OTT watching experience, and bring some of the best global content out there to the screens of Indian viewers," added OTTplay’s co-founder, Avinash Mudaliar. "Hallmark Movies Now's wide collection of feel-good, rom-com and family movies and dramas has a large and ready viewer base with India's love for romance and drama that spans generations and languages. We are delighted to partner with Hallmark to launch it for the first time in India for OTTplay Premium subscribers." ■

Once upon a time, Disney’s Jiminy Cricket sang about wishing upon a star, indelibly linking the song to the House That Walt Built. These days, by Jiminy, Disney’s Star streaming service is wishing upon cricket. Without it, Disney’s dreams of creating a real streaming service may run into even more trouble than that kid with the big nose did on Pleasure Island. 

It’s the latest question hanging over Bob Chapek’s empire, which already had enough headaches in Florida, Anaheim and China to make some of us wonder if it might be more than a board oversight that the new-ish CEO hasn’t had his three-year contract extended. 

Even amid all the streaming mayhem of recent weeks, Disney resolutely maintains it will have 230 million - 260 million combined subscribers by 2025. That is, despite the Netflix-induced chill that has settled across the streaming industry. But by the end of the week, we’ll know a lot more about how attainable Disney’s stubbornly ambitious goal will be. 

On June 12, the governing board of the world’s biggest cricket organization will announce which streaming service has won the privilege of paying something like $5 billion to carry the massively popular Indian Premier League for the next five years, in streaming, broadcasting and international rights. 

Also read: Amazon Unveils Slate of 41 Local Shows and New Rental Service in India, as Regional Battle with Netflix and Disney Heats Up

The 14-year-old league plays a special form of cricket, and has been hugely popular since it was founded. The league added two more teams last year, which paid $800 million each to join the bonanza. Disney inherited the cricket rights when it bought Star India as part of its $71 billion acquisition of much of Fox in 2019, and since has incorporated Star into Disney Plus in India. 

Now the company has to decide if it’s ready to stick with cricket. 

The minimum bid for the new contract is $4.4 billion, according to the governing Board of Control for Cricket in India. Other major bidders expected to step to the wicket include Alphabet’s YouTube, Amazon, a reinvigorated Sony Pictures Networks India that recently merged with local media giant Zee, and yet another local/US partnership, Viacom18, which includes Paramount Global and Reliance Industries. 

In the years since Star paid $2.5 billion for the contract in 2017, Disney has accumulated a significant empire of more than 50 million subscribers in what soon will be the world’s most populous country. That’s nearly a quarter of Disney’s combined 205 million global subscribers, pushing it within hailing distance of worldwide leader Netflix.  

And Disney has had no problems splashing down billions for other top-level sports rights. Look at the palace coup it pulled in 2020 to scoop up TV rights to SEC college football and basketball games.

That deal (estimated at more than $300 million per year) caused eyes to bug out across college sports, not the least because it’s more than five times what long-time incumbent CBS has paid, in what admittedly was a ludicrous bargain. 

But splashing the cash for the quasi-professional games of college football’s best conference is one thing. You can sell a lot of truck and beer ads, pump up the Disney-owned SEC Network, and give people a reason (finally) to watch ESPN Plus. Most importantly, you can make your money back. 

That’s less certain with the IPL contract, which likely will require a winning bid well north of $5 billion, for a five-year deal. Can a deal that pricey pencil out for Disney? Maybe not. 

That’s because those Indian subscribers aren’t paying much to watch. Monthly ARPU (average revenue per user) is a pitiful 76 cents in India. Compare that to the rest of the planet: those subs fetch an ARPU of $6.35. Disney has acknowledged in multiple earnings reports that the India sector has been a drag on streaming revenue, and it could get a lot worse. 

The company may be able to extract more advertising and marketing revenue (it doesn’t disclose those numbers) but will certainly have to execute at a high level in a complex market to make back its outlays if it pays to keep the rights. 

Also read: Netflix Sees Green Shoots in India

Disney isn’t the only American company struggling to make the numbers add up in India, of course. 

Netflix has repeatedly had to tweak its subscriber offerings there, with mobile-only packages charging minimal amounts, then upselling to get people to pay more for offerings designed for connected TVs. Amazon has faced its own challenges in India, though more for its e-commerce offerings, of which streaming is just another enticement to sign up. 

And Disney executives have said subscribers are there for more than cricket. The company does have all those great Disney franchises, and also offers thousands of hours of local content. 

But given outsized numbers involved, this one deal could have a pivotal impact on Disney’s global streaming ambitions. It might be the most fascinating cricket match Hollywood has ever watched. 

Amazon has announced a major expansion of its streaming efforts in India, introducing 41 new locally produced original series and movie titles for the region, while also debuting a new transactional VOD service. 

At an event attended by Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke and other Amazon execs and creative partners in Mumbai Thursday, the company also said that it will double its local investment in subscription streaming service Amazon Prime Video, which launched in India five years ago. All told, Amazon has invested more than $6.5 billion in the region to date, the company said.

“In the last five years, we have built a strong slate of locally produced content across languages, super-serving the diverse entertainment needs of Indian customers. With increased access and distribution, we have helped these great stories travel far and wide in India, and around the world,” said Gaurav Gandhi, who heads Amazon Prime Video's presence in India. (Tech Crunch was among those covering Thursday's Mumbai event.)

“India is among Prime Video’s most strategic markets, and the launch of a new movie rental and TVOD service is testament to that,” Amazon said in a statement. 

Amazon charges Prime Video subscribers in India about $1.20 a month. The new transactional service, however, will enable the company to establish price points as high as $6.50 for certain rental titles. 

Also read: Netflix Sees Green Shoots in India

Amazon is among a number of U.S. streaming companies making major investments in India, an "unsaturated" country with 1.38 billion consumers, many of which have yet to purchase their first streaming-enabled smart TV and adopt service. 

Disney purchased local streaming service Hotstar when it bought Fox's entertainment assets three years ago. It now counts Hotstar's 46 million subscribers in the same global bucket that it touts its Disney Plus users. Notably, Hotstar is home to Premier League soccer matches in the region.

Netflix is less further along in the region with only around 4.5 million subscribers. But it announced its own "doubling down" in India earlier this year and has been making noise about Subcontinental expansion on recent earnings reports, where shareholders are more than anxious to hear plans about how growth might be rekindled. 

During last week's otherwise dour Q1 Netflix earnings report, co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, remarked on a recent price cut in India: "The product fit incorporates subscription prices as well as willingness and ability to pay. So we have seen a nice uptick in engagement in India. We are definitely taking it in the right direction."

Netflix wants investors to know that it still has one of its four global regions growing, and that ain't bad! 

Netflix on Tuesday reported decelerating first-quarter revenue growth and subscriber losses -- losses! -- in three key regions: the U.S and Canada (UCAN); Europe, the Middle and Africa (EMEA); and Latin America and the Caribbean (LATAM). 

And as we all know by now, Netflix has since experienced a rather catastrophic decline on the Nasdaq, its stock price falling 37%.

Also read: The Party’s Over: What Netflix’s Horrible Quarter Means For the Rest of the Streaming Sector (Bloom)

Netflix did, however, grow in the Asia-Pacific region, adding nearly 1.1 million subscribers during the first quarter and expanding revenue by over 20% year over year to $917 million.

Netflix executives said earlier this week that they're seeing "nice growth" in Japan, India, Philippines, Thailand and Taiwan.

However, an emerging key to its APAC regional growth has been India, a country of 1.38 billion consumers, and in which Netflix recently lowered prices to as cheap as ₹199 ($2.60).

Netflix first entered India in 2016, and it's yet to really catch on in a country dominated, streaming-wise, by Disney's Hotstar, which ended 2021 with nearly 46 million subscribers. Netflix doesn't break out its India subscriber totals, but consensus research company estimates put Netflix's paying base at around 4.5 million customers.

Netflix has, in the past, been accused of not familiarizing itself enough with the nuances of Indian market and "throwing money" into its local operations rather than really getting hands-on.

During his quarterly interview for shareholders in January, Netflix Co-CEO Reed Hastings conceded that improving Netflix's market position in India has been "frustrating," but he also signaled Netflix's renewed commitment, adding, "We're leaning in there."

In December, Netflix announced a slate of 12 new series, 13 new movies and seven returning series for the local Indian market, emphasizing a priority on local production.

There's reason to believe the tide could be turning for Netflix.

During Tuesday's otherwise dour Q1 earnings report, the company's other co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, said, "The product fit incorporates subscription prices as well as willingness and ability to pay. So we have seen a nice uptick in engagement in India. We are definitely taking it in the right direction."

While Netflix does have competition in India in the form of Disney, it's not facing nearly as much of the oppressive market saturation it's seeing in its home UCAN base and in other global territories.

For example, smart TV adoption -- a key gateway to subscription streaming service signups -- appears to be going strong. India is coming off a record year for smart TV shipments, up 48% in 2021.

Still, while there may be a lot more "runway" for Netflix to build a strong local customer base, password sharing -- a topic of global concern addressed at length by Netflix during its day of infamy Tuesday -- is of particular Subcontinental worry.

"There are over 100 million households that already are choosing to view Netflix. They love the service. We just got to get paid to some degree for them," Hastings said in his latest investor interview.

OneWeb, which is launching a global low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite-delivered broadband service, said it has struck a long-term deal to deliver service to India, contingent on securing the "appropriate" licenses and regulatory approvals.

The company said Thursday it has a six-year agreement with Hughes (EchoStar), a OneWeb investor through the latter's Hughes Communications India Private Ltd. (HCIPL), a joint venture between Hughes and Bharti Airtel Limited, which already delivers satellite broadband to the company.

OneWeb has yet to launch its service, but said it now has almost 400 LEOs deployed of a planned 648 and said it plans to begging that service by the end of the year.

Also: OneWeb Beefs Up Broadband Delivery

OneWeb is among a number of such LEO-based satellite broadband efforts the FCC has given its regulatory approval as a way to promote broadband price and service competition, advance IoT and 5G for all, and help close the digital divide in this country.

OneWeb's stated goal is to get broadband to some of the hardest-to-reach areas of the world.

In June 2017, the FCC unanimously approved OneWeb's request to deliver its service in the U.S. market, including particularly hard-to-reach and expensive-to-reach rural areas.

Pai's successor, chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel, also supports LEOs as a way to provide broadband competition.

OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in 2020, suggesting it was on the verge of getting financing when the pandemic hit. It had already invested billions of dollars in the enterprise.

It was able to get new funding from, among others, the British government, and emerged from bankruptcy late last year. It secured over $1 billion in launch insurance back in September 2021. ■

CuriosityStream said it has reached a distribution deal with Tata Sky, India’s largest content distribution and pay TV platform.

CuriosityStream will be available via Tata Sky Binge, which can be accessed on the Tata Sky Binge+ Smart set top box and on the Amazon Fire TV Stick-Tata Sky Edition. Tata Sky Binge aggregates the premium OTT and catch-up TV content under a single interface and subscription.

Curiosity Stream will also be available as a linear service on television to Tata Sky DTH subscribers with an option to view live and catch-up content on-the-go via the Tata Sky Mobile app, beginning Nov. 17.

“CuriosityStream shares Tata Sky’s commitment to bringing viewers the highest quality content wherever and whenever they want to experience new adventures and discover the world’s most fascinating events, people, and places,” said Bakori Davis, managing director and head of International Distribution for CuriosityStream in a press release. “We look forward to partnering with Tata Sky to introduce CuriosityStream to new viewers throughout India and to grow our company’s reach in this dynamic media market.”

The partnership will enable Tata Sky subscribers to enjoy  exclusive originals, series and features like Deep Ocean Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, Dragons & Damsels Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places, Mumbai Railway, Amazing Dinoworld and Age of Big Cats among others.

“CuriosityStream has thousands of informative and thought-provoking documentaries covering the realms of science, history, space, technology and many such subjects that have an enviable fan following in India,” said Tata Sky chief commercial and content officer Pallavi Puri in a press release. “This kind of a coveted library adds another dimension to our content catalogue and we are very proud of this association.”

Add India to the list of countries looking at Alphabet Inc.s Google for possible antitrust breaches.

India is challenging Google’s business practices that restrict the capabilities of smart TV markers who license the company’s Android TV operating system, Reuters reported. It’s the fourth major antitrust challenge against Google in India. The company is also facing antitrust litigation in China, as well as its home country, the United States.

Android TV powers 60% of the nearly 8 million smart TVs sold in India in 2019, according to Counterpoint Research, with Google licensing the software to manufacturers including TCL and Xiaomi. (Both companies are listed as plaintiffs in the case against Google.)

The Mountain View, Calif. tech company restricts electronics makers who license the Android mobile operating system for smart phones to also license a competing TV OS like Amazon Fire TV. Android powers 99% of the nearly half billion smart phones used in India, Reuters said. 

Conversely, if a company licenses a competing TV OS, it won’t be able to offer access to essential Android mobile components for smart phones, such as the Google Play Store.

Google has declined comment. 

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai tweeted out the news Monday (June 29) that the Indian government has just banned almost 60 apps from Chinese companies, with TikTok leading the list. 

The tweet came the same day that Pai, himself the son of Indian immigrants, was speaking on a webinar to the U.S.-India Business Council. 

Related: Reps Grill TikTok Over Privacy

As the tweet said, the Indian government concluded that TikTok and other Chinese apps were "prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order." 

[embed]https://twitter.com/AjitPaiFCC/status/1277625110111891456[/embed]

Pai is among many Republicans who has signaled they think social media sites and other edge providers have gotten sufficiently large and powerful to warrant more scrutiny in Washington.

Legislators on both sides of the aisle in this country, led by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), have been trying to get TikTok off the devices of government employees and kids for a while now.

A bipartisan quartet of Senators has called for a government investigation into the wildly popular social media video app, saying that "[f]aced with compelling evidence that [TikTok] is blatantly flouting binding U.S. privacy rules, the FTC should move swiftly to launch an investigation and forcefully hold violators accountable for their conduct."  

Related: Bill Would Ban TikTok From Government Devices 

TikTok (formerly Musical.ly) last year agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle the FTC allegation that it had illegally collected personal info from kids. In addition to the settlement, TikTok "agreed to change their practices to ensure COPPA compliance," the FTC said at the time. 

UPDATED 3.23.20: Disney said it will push back its launch of Disney Plus in France until April 7, at the request of the French government. The streaming service will launch in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland as planned on Tuesday, March 24.

The Walt Disney Company is postponing plans to deploy its new Disney Plus streaming service in India, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to massively disrupt global commerce.

The service, which got off to a massive start in North America, amassing 28.6 million subscribers from November 1 through December 31, was originally set to expand to the subcontinent on March 29. (Variety appears to be the first to report on this delay.)

Also read: Disney Plus: How It Went From Zero to 28.6 Million in Less Than Three Months

Disney Plus is being integrated into Hotstar, a Disney-owned streaming service already established in India. The SVOD service’s launch was to coincide with the start of the Indian Premiere League cricket tournament. But that tournament, like virtually every other sporting event around the world, has been postponed amid coronavirus-fueled social distancing and quarantines.

Visit Next TV to read more stories like this one. 

The tournament has been postponed until April 15 … for now.

:“Given the delay of the season, we have made the decision to briefly pause the roll-out of Disney Plus and will announce a new revised premiere date for the service soon,” said Uday Shankar, president of The Walt Disney Company APAC, and chairman of Star and Disney India, in a statement

Also read: HBO Max, Quibi Stick with Launch Plans Despite Global COVID-19 Disruption

Notably, WarnerMedia told Next TV this week it has no plans to move off its late-May launch plan for HBO Plus. Likewise, Quibi said it plans to stick to its April 6 launch plan. 

UPDATED ON 3/23/20: Disney said it will proceed with plans to launch Disney Plus on Tuesday, March 24 in the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland. However, at the behest of the French government, it will delay launch in France until April 7.

The Walt Disney Company is postponing plans to deploy its new Disney Plus streaming service in India, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to massively disrupt global commerce.

The service, which got off to a massive start in North America, amassing 28.6 million subscribers from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31, was originally set to expand to the subcontinent on March 29. (Variety appears to be the first to report on this delay.)

Also read: Disney Plus: How It Went From Zero to 28.6 Million in Less Than Three Months

Disney Plus is being integrated into Hotstar, a Disney-owned streaming service already established in India. The SVOD service’s launch was to coincide with the start of the Indian Premiere League cricket tournament. But that tournament, like virtually every other sporting event around the world, has been postponed amid coronavirus-fueled social distancing and quarantines. 

The tournament has been postponed until April 15 … for now. 

“Given the delay of the season, we have made the decision to briefly pause the roll-out of Disney Plus and will announce a new revised premiere date for the service soon,” said Uday Shankar, president of The Walt Disney Company APAC, and chairman of Star and Disney India, in a statement.

Also read: HBO Max, Quibi Stick with Launch Plans Despite Global COVID-19 Disruption

Notably, WarnerMedia told Next TV this week it has no plans to move off its late-May launch plan for HBO Plus. Likewise, Quibi said it plans to stick to its April 6 launch plan. 

Discovery Communications said it acquired a majority stake in Turmeric Vision Private Limited, which owns pay TV network FoodFood in India.

The deal makes Discovery partners with India’s top culinary celebrity, Sanjeev Kapoor.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal expands Discovery’s presence in India. Discovery said it plans to support FoodFood’s 100% focus on local programming and will begin selling FoodFood’s advertising effective immediately.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Sony Pictures Networks (SPN) is launching two ESPN channels in India.

In a first for Sony, Sony ESPN and Sony ESPN HD will launch Jan. 17. Sony already delivers the SPN Six and SPN Six sports networks in the country and and on the subcontinent.

The launches are described as the first steps in a collaboration with ESPN that will include a multisport website and an app in association with the new Sony ESPN channel.

Sony ESPN's first even will be the Australian Open, first leg of tennis's Grand Slam.

Sony and ESPN are also looking to develop programming around major cricket events, India's most popular sport.

Sony ESPN channels programming will include soccer, tennis, and football.

"SPN is focused on becoming the first choice in television and digital entertainment," SPN India CEO NP Singh said in a statement. "Our collaboration with ESPN is a targeted step in that direction as it helps us ink another milestone in our growth trajectory.

“Not only that, the launch of the Sony ESPN cluster of channels validates our intent to provide stylized, high-quality and insightful sporting content to viewers in India and across the Indian subcontinent,” Singh added.

It’s official. America’s cable and wireless providers are the worst when it comes to customer service, according to the recently published Customer Service Hall of Shame list. Behemoth media company Comcast ranks No. 1 at providing the most “abysmal” customer service among those surveyed, while AT&T, now officially merged with DirecTV, comes in at No. 5. In fact, cable, satellite and wireless service providers make up six of the 10 spots on this year’s list.

While most media companies claim to be committed to providing good customer service, and many invest millions in marketing catchphrases and taglines to reinforce that claim, few have learned that to actually provide good customer service, it’s not what you say but rather what you do that matters most. 

We learned this valuable lesson over the past three decades as one of India's largest private-sector enterprises, with our core areas of business in consumer electronics and home appliances. We understand that customers not only need but also depend on both electronics and appliances to manage their daily lives and that reliability of both product and service is critical in building, maintaining and retaining customer satisfaction and loyalty.  That’s why, when Videocon launched its Videocon d2h direct-to-home service in July 2009 — entering a marketplace that already had five established service providers — our goal was to differentiate ourselves by providing 100% customer satisfaction.

Like their U.S. counterparts, our competitors offered confusing subscription packages coupled with unsatisfactory technology, long wait times for technical solutions and frequent disruptions of service — the perfect recipe for unhappy customers willing to move to another provider at the first opportunity. And since Indian regulations mandate nonexclusive content, we realized that the only way we could distinguish ourselves from our competition was by innovating in the areas where their customers were dissatisfied. 

We promised same-day installation, superior compression technology that essentially eliminated buffering issues, a simple pre-paid subscription model and a plethora of local, regional and specialty channels all supported by professional, courteous and timely resolution of customer complaints. 

By shifting 8% to 10% of our operating budget to retaining customers rather than constantly acquiring new ones, we created some 300 local Direct Service Centers (DSCs),extensively training and employing more than 7,000 customer service and technical support representatives. Staff are assigned to DSCs based on customer density, ensuring immediate availability, and are empowered to resolve any customer service issue quickly and to the subscriber’s full satisfaction. And employee promotions and incentive programs are based on customer ratings of an individual’s performance. This unique but common-sense approach to doing business created a dramatic shift in the attitude and behavior of both consumers and employees.

Today, Videocon d2h is ranked as India’s best and fastest-growing DTH service provider. More encouraging is the fact that 90 to 100 million Indian homes will make the switch to digital platforms in the year ahead. And while the number of channels (525), packaging, pricing, programming and compression technology offered by Videocon d2h certainly play into our extraordinarily high customer satisfaction, we believe the bulk of the credit goes to our 7,000 customer-service technicians who will undoubtedly provide the advantage in attracting those 100 million new subscribers to Videocon d2h.

We believe this example serves as a warning to America’s media companies, especially those that are “too big to fail.”  The more cumbersome their operations become, the more room there will be for upstarts willing to always put the customer, rather than the bottom line, first.  Once again, our business strategy is based on one simple concept — the consumer always wins.

Saurabh Dhoot is executive chairman of Indian direct-to-home provider Videocon d2h.

WWE and Ten Sports said they have extended their television distribution agreement for five years through 2019 while growing their partnership beyond WWE’s weekly flagship programming to include localized content, more languages and live events.

In addition to continued broadcasts of WWE staples like Raw, SmackDown, NXT and monthly pay-per-view events, beginning  Jan. 1, Ten Sports will introduce a new one-hour fully customized version of Raw tailored specifically for the Indian audience and add WWE Main Event to its programming lineup. Ten Sports will also air WWE content in multiple Indian languages for the first time and bring WWE live events back to India in 2015.

“We are very excited to extend our long-standing, successful partnership with WWE for the Indian Subcontinent,” said Ten Sports CEO Rajesh Sethi in a statement. “WWE is the leader in sports entertainment, and its high-quality entertainment is a huge hit among Indian audiences. Being rights holders since 2002, we have seen WWE grow over the years to dominate the sports entertainment space, and with this new deal through 2019, we are confident of taking our partnership to the next level, delivering audiences more breakthrough programming and engagement opportunities in the years to come.”

Ten Sports and WWE first signed a distribution deal in 2005.

“India remains a strategically important market for WWE and we are thrilled to continue our long-term partnership with Ten Sports, the region’s leader in sports programming,” said WWE Executive Vice President, International Gerrit Meier in a statement. “As the value of the WWE brand and our content continues to increase around the world, the scale and scope of this new agreement illustrates our ability to drive a passionate and engaged audience as well as the potential we have for future growth.”

Global satellite television revenue is expected to reach $99.9 billion by 2020, a nearly 14% increase from last year’s $87.8 billion in sales, according to a new report by Digital TV Research.

The Global Satellite TV Forecasts estimates that Asia Pacific and Latin America will show the strongest growth, while western Europe declines as completion for other platforms increases.

The Digital TV Research report looks at 138 countries and estimates that total satellite homes will rise from 192 million at the end of 2013 to 271 million by 2020. Of those 78.5 million additional homes, 27.7 million will come from India,  5.8 million from Brazil and 5.4 million from Indonesia, the report estimates. The pay TV subscriber total will more than double in 47 countries, while 13 countries will experience declines between 2013 and 2020.

Digital TV Research predicts satellite TV revenues will overtake cable TV revenues in 2014, accounting for 46.0% of total pay TV revenues and rising to 47.8% by 2020.  The US will remain the satellite TV market leader by revenues generated, while India will add the most satellite TV revenues ($3.2 billion; tripling its total) between 2013 and 2020. Next is Brazil with an additional $1.6 billion, followed by the US with an additional $1.5 billion. The report predicts that satellite revenue will more than double in 44 countries in the next six years.

Others will see declines as competition continues to heat up.  
“Satellite TV revenues will decline for 19 countries between 2013 and 2020,” said report author Simon Murray in a statement. “Much of this is due to greater competition forcing satellite TV platforms to offer cheaper packages which will lead to lower ARPUs. Furthermore, low-cost satellite TV packages are making a significant impact in several countries.”

Including free-to-air and pay satellite TV households, the report estimates that 439 million homes will directly receive TV signals via satellite dishes by 2020, up by almost 100 million from 2013. More than 25% of global TV households will have a satellite TV dish by 2020, up from 18.3% in 2010 and 22.3% in 2013, according to Digital TV Research.