Telcos go slow on content spends; investment towards buying content falls 12% in FY24
telecom operators have fallen 12% to ₹1,335 crore for the fiscal ended March 31 from ₹1,516 crore in the previous fiscal, even as two of the three operators have shown a decline in content investments, as per the figures sourced from the annual reports of these companies.
In the last few years, telecom operators have been heavily focused on acquiring content from TV broadcasters, besides partnering with streaming platforms, to build stickiness and drive data consumption.
According to Jio Platforms' annual report, the company's content charges jumped 74% to ₹362 crore. Jio Platforms, the holding company of Reliance Jio Infocomm, also owns JioTV, India's largest live TV aggregation service.
Jio TV provides over 1,000 live TV channels in over 15 languages across entertainment, sports, and news. Reliance Jio Infocomm had 490 million customers as of June.
According to their respective annual reports, cash-strapped Vodafone Idea's content spending declined 49% to ₹337 crore, while Airtel's content spending was down 2.3% to ₹636 crore.
Bharti Airtel's OTT aggregation platform, Airtel Xstream Play, provides over 22 OTT apps on a single platform. Airtel Xstream Play has become the fastest-growing OTT aggregator with 5 million paid customers.
During the fiscal year, the company bolstered its Xstream service with the addition of regional content platforms, Sun NXT and Aha, and launched India's first anime entertainment channel with Anime Booth.
The company, which has 409 million customers in India, is offering
