Mukesh Ambani-owned OTT app JioCinema will add more than 100 films and TV series to the platform as it looks to ride on the popularity of its cricket broadcast, especially the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) tournament, according to a report.
Bloomberg in a report said this move is JioCinema’s attempt to take on global giants like Walt Disney and Netflix, which are expanding in the fast-growing Indian market.
This would also mean that JioCinema will start to charge for the content but the exact pricing strategy is yet to finalised, the report said quoting Media and Content Business President Jyoti Deshpande.
Reliance Group Chairman Mukesh Ambani
The new titles will be rolled out before the end of the Indian Premier League cricket next month, and viewers will still be able to watch matches for free until then.
That includes rolling out films and series from thrillers and romance to biopics in languages including Hindi, Marathi, Bengali and Gujarati. It will also release new and original movies produced by Jio Studios like Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s Dunki and Amitabh Bachchan’s Section 84. Jio Studios has recently announced a multi-year, multi-film collaboration with SVF Entertainment for the Bengali market.
The free streaming of IPL 2023 has brought in viewers for JioCinema, with an estimated 550 crore views so far. The number of viewers for the first weekend eclipsed what was recorded across the entire last season of Tata IPL on digital. The numbers were also higher than ICC T20 World Cup 2022.