Netflix’s $83-billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, if it goes through, has the potential to reshape India’s Rs 38,000-crore (2024-25) OTT market. For starters, it would enhance Netflix’s offering for the Indian M&E market and improve its positioning and market share within the OTT space. With JioStar holding a virtual monopoly over sports broadcast, Netflix, with a deeper global IP, will be the platform with the strongest recall for movies, originals and international TV.
Power shift, not disruption
Experts aver this would enable Netflix to raise ARPUs in a price-sensitive market and challenge broadcaster-led OTTs and mid-tier platforms that lack catalogue depth. In a sense, the potential acquisition will consolidate the streaming market around two players — with Netflix controlling Hollywood prestige and JioStar owning sports and regional mass entertainment. This will lead to households maintaining multiple subscriptions, such as JioStar for cricket and Indian content, Netflix for global franchises. In that sense, says Karan Pherwani, vice-president at Chtrbox, “the implications lie in long-term power dynamics rather than immediate disruption”.
The immediate impact is obvious. As Santosh N, managing partner at D and P Advisory, points out, the transition of HBO and WB content to Netflix primarily strengthens Netflix’s value proposition rather than destabilising competitors. He argues that while interface and user experience matter, “at the end of the day you should have good content”, and pairing HBO’s tentpole shows with Netflix’s superior platform “will only improve” the viewing experience.
Netflix gain may be limited, JioStar impact neglible
He notes that the shift could attract a subset of HBO loyalists into Netflix’s fold, though the overlap between premium subscribers means the uplift might not be dramatic. On pricing, Santosh expects discipline: Netflix will test elasticity before raising prices, while JioStar is unlikely to discount its subscriptions simply to compensate for a single studio’s exit.
A senior source close to the matter insists the entire debate is overstated. In his view, HBO and Warner Bros content, despite its prestige, caters to a small, niche audience in India. He notes that while these titles generate strong rankings on JioStar’s English charts, the overall viewer base for such content remains small compared to the mass-market appeal of regional entertainment and live sports. For JioStar itself, he stresses, “the impact will be negligible” since its core economics are driven not by Hollywood dramas but by sports, telco partnerships and Indian content.
Rajat Agrawal, COO of Ultra Media & Entertainment Group, frames the impact differently. He believes the consolidation highlights a widening gap between platforms reliant on global IP and those staking their future on Indian storytelling. Without access to Warner Bros titles, Agrawal says the platform “will need to rethink its content mix”, shifting toward local originals, regional depth and differentiated pricing models. Competing on library size, he argues, is increasingly futile. Indian platforms must now compete on identity, not scale. Net net, while some see strategic realignment, others see business as usual. For now, the impact may be less a seismic shift and more a sharpening of contrasts in a market already defined by them.