Amazon brings BBC shows to India as battle with Mukesh Ambani heats up
Amazon.com Inc. will start streaming BBC shows in India, opening up a new front in an intensifying entertainment war with the likes of Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, in one of the world’s largest media markets.
From Thursday, Amazon’s India-based Prime Video members will be able to watch popular British mainstays including The Great British Bakeoff and Strictly Come Dancing on BBC Player, as well BBC Kids, through annual bolt-on subscriptions at 599 rupees ($7.3), the companies said in a joint statement, without elaborating on details of the deal. The agreement allows Indians to access BBC’s wide range of entertainment, documentaries and reality shows for the first time without having to resort to virtual private networks to disguise IP addresses.
It also represents a concerted challenge by Amazon against Ambani’s JioCinema platform, which recently bagged multi-year contracts to show HBO and Max Original content, as well as the hugely popular Indian Premier League cricket tournament. Read more: Ambani Brings ‘Succession’ to India After Disney, HBO Part Ways The BBC addition will help Amazon — which has a large portfolio of original Indian-made entertainment — compete with Netflix Inc., which offers Indian subscribers a wider amount of worldwide films and shows, according to Karan Taurani, a Mumbai-based media analyst at Elara Securities.Fragmented Market Prime Video and Netflix held an aggregate 10% share of India’s premium streaming market by viewing minutes, according to a May report from consultancy Media Partners Asia.
“This will provide some scale and growth for Amazon,” said Taurani. “These kind of partnerships are the way ahead — rather than them launching their own platform in a market like India, which is
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