The premium subscription will allow users to watch Hollywood content from multiple studios on any device at the highest video and audio quality. Subscribers to this plan can watch content across four devices simultaneously.
The company has also provided unique promo codes to Voot Select members, which can be redeemed at the time of subscribing to the JioCinema Premium plan. Voot Select is a subscription-based service from Viacom18. It also owns ad-led platform Voot.
Sources in Viacom18 said the idea is to have only one annual subscription plan for Hollywood content. “Sports will continue to be free. Only Hollywood content will go behind the paywall,” one of them said on the condition of anonymity.
Viacom18 is streaming the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 for free to all internet users in the country. The company has paid ₹23,758 crore for the IPL digital rights for the 2023-27 cycle.
“JioCinema has built a strong customer base on the back of IPL,” said Kurate Digital Consulting senior partner Uday Sodhi. “They will use this base to create a premium subscription business. An SVoD (subscription video on demand) business on the back of a strong AVoD (advertising video on demand) business is the right way to go in markets like India. Hotstar, SonyLIV and Zee5 have built successful subscription businesses after building a large AVoD user base.”
But Elara Capital senior vice president Karan Taurani believes that JioCinema will not get a large paid subscriber base from the Hollywood premium plan. “The Indian audience is value-driven and may not pay this much (₹999/year) only for HBO and Warner Bros content,” he said.He, however, added that an ad-free subscription plan with HBO and Warner Bros content will help JioCinema target premium households. “Jio Cinema may also bundle the HBO/Warner Bros content free for their premium Jio Fibre subs or postpaid mobile subs, which have a higher ARPU (average revenue per user),” he said.
Viacom18 had last month inked a multi-year, multi-million dollar deal with Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) for acquiring the streaming and TV rights of HBO, Max Original and Warner Bros content in India. The company will be paying upwards of $20 million in annual licence fees to WBD.
Singapore-based research company Media Partners Asia had earlier said in a report that Viacom18’s subscription service is expected to have content from Paramount+ besides WBD.
It also said Viacom18’s streaming service Voot, which had 6 million subscribers at the end of 2022, is expected to get integrated with JioCinema in the second half of 2023.
As reported earlier, JioCinema will also be the default home for more than 100 movies and web shows that JioStudios will be rolling out over the next 18-24 months. The Reliance Industries-owned content studio has spent upwards of ₹2,000 crore on producing over 100 titles.
