JioStar urges content producers to embrace balanced deals with shared risk model

Economic Times

26-06-2025

At APOS 2025, Garg shared a roadmap to strengthen the economics of streaming in India through targeted investment, innovative revenue models, and long-term scale.
As India's media market matures, content creation and financing are emerging as key areas of disruption, with broadcasters and streamers increasingly pushing for a more balanced model in which content producers share both the risk and the reward, marking a shift away from one-sided deals and toward co-investment that is already gaining traction.
That was the message from Prateek Garg, Managing Director of Marigold Park Capital, an affiliate of Bodhi Tree Systems, which holds a 7% stake in Reliance and Disney backed JioStar, which runs over 100 TV channels and a streaming platform JioHotstar.
Garg said the traditional model, where platforms and broadcasters bear the full financial risk of content that may or may not succeed, is no longer sustainable. 'For over a decade, the risk of content has been borne by the broadcaster and media players,' he said. 'It's time the risk reward equation gets more balanced.'As Indian platforms aim to serve the next generation of viewers, they are calling on their content partners to move toward a more collaborative model. This means co-investing in content and sharing in its performance outcomes.'We don't want to be the ones taking the burden of somebody else producing and us taking the full risk of that content not working,' Garg said, adding, 'That movement has already started. We will accelerate that in the next 20 to 18 months.'
He also said that partners must be willing to share the risk, noting, 'It won't be a free ride.' At present, broadcasters either commission or acquire content from production companies. In the case of commissioned content, production companies receive a fixed margin on production costs, while acquired content offers them the potential for upside depending on performance.Content remains the largest cost driver for broadcasters and streamers, with expenses rising steadily each year. JioStar vice-chairman Uday Shankar recently said the company's content investments will reach $10 billion between FY24 and FY26.He added that media companies must keep investing to stay relevant as entertainment options grow and big tech platforms compete for consumers' time and attention.
At APOS 2025, during a session titled Transforming the Media Investment Playbook: Case Studies & Perspectives with Media Partners Asia's Vivek Couto, Garg shared a roadmap to strengthen the economics of streaming in India through targeted investment, innovative revenue models, and long-term scale. 'We don't want to build a service for just 15 to 20 million viewers in India. It's a big market,' Garg said. 'Our model is: how do we become relevant for the largest part of society? That's where the top of the funnel will always remain our biggest priority.'JioStar's streaming platform JioHotstar, formed through the merger of Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema, completed platform integration in a record four months. 'We migrated two apps with different business models into one app, zero consumer loss, zero monetisation loss,' Garg said.The next 12 to 18 months, he said, will focus on innovating the revenue model. 'Globally, people have been slightly lazy when it comes to business model innovation in streaming. You'll see a lot of new things from our team.'While cricket has been central to user acquisition, Garg said JioStar is now investing in building platform stickiness beyond the sport. 'Cricket is the best aggregator we have. But with the support of cricket, we need to build new muscles so that by the time cricket gets over, we have a platform that isn't dependent on it.'The company is working on content diversification, including micro-dramas, and is building a loyalty programme aimed at daily engagement. 'Every Indian with access to the internet should come to us every day. That's the north star we're chasing.'Garg emphasised that streaming businesses must be capital intensive to compete at scale. 'This is not an industry where you can compromise at the top of the funnel,' he said. 'Don't run a business as usual model. One of the big tech companies will gobble you up in your own market.'Despite linear television's structural decline, Garg believes it still holds value. "The TV universe is declining, but the good part for our business is that we are driving a reallocation of revenues and gaining share from other broadcasters,' he said.JioStar competes with Zee, Sony, Sun TV, Netflix, and Prime Video in both the television and streaming space.Connected TV, meanwhile, is on a steep growth curve. 'Fifty million people watched the IPL on connected TVs. As the shift from linear to connected happens, we're best positioned to capture that value.'