For years, HBO’s Game of Thrones has been the world’s most pirated show. In India, too, fans who are not content with the show’s censored version airing on Star World Premiere have been using illegal file-sharing sites to download the uncut version of the epic, episode by episode.
That, however, seems to be changing. Hotstar, the homegrown streaming platform from Star Network, has been streaming the unedited version of the show since Season 6 last year. A lot of viewers who earlier depended on illegal torrents are now paying to stream it. Ajit Mohan, Hotstar’s chief executive officer, talks to THE WEEK about the show’s booming popularity here.
Ajit Mohan, CEO, Hotstar
Your ad campaign ahead of the current season of GoT poked fun at those who relied on torrents. How did you plan the remarkable campaign?
Until last year, when Hotstar started showing Game Of Thrones, there was no legitimate delivery of the show on on-demand/digital platforms. We presented viewers with a completely new proposition: You get access to episodes without any cuts, and it is aired at the same time when the US airing happens. From a fan’s point of view, it was a dramatic leap. [Earlier] you had to wait days [to watch an episode], and you didn’t get to watch the original version. Now, you were on a par with the world.
From a content point of view, we are not competing with any of our peers in the subscription business. The competition is with torrent [sites], where a lot of pirated content is available. The fact that it [the content] was pirated, and that sometimes it was not even of high-quality, did not really matter to consumers, because that was the only option available to them. We wanted to make a bold statement. We wanted to say Torrent Morghulis (‘torrents must die’, in GoT lingo).
What has been the campaign’s impact on viewership?
We used the GoT campaign to make people who think they can find anything on torrent sites aware that they can now find almost anything on Hotstar Premium [the paid, ad-free version of the service]. And yes, we have seen a very meaningful surge in the viewership of GoT on our platform.
There is a paywall for GoT on Hotstar Premium. Has the Indian audience embraced the subscription model?
Yes, it has. We started Hotstar as a no-subscription model, because we recognised that people were already paying a meaningful amount for data. And data is pretty expensive relative to income in India and to what people are used to paying for traditional television. But, a year into the service, we realised that there is a more discerning, affluent audience who have access to high-quality broadband and who are willing to pay. That is why we created Hotstar Premium. In the past 14 months since we launched Premium, we have seen a steady growth.
The traffic on digital platforms is mostly coming from urban areas. What kind of response has Hotstar been getting from smaller towns, specifically for GoT?
It [GoT’s popularity] is a pan-India phenomenon. It is one of those shows that really appeal to the audience just on the quality of storytelling. It is by far one of the greatest television shows ever made. It’s not that only the urban audience will gravitate towards it. It has got tremendous affinity across age groups and geography.
THE BIG MONEY-SPINNERS
SEASON 1-5 BUDGET
$6 million per episode
SEASON 6 BUDGET
$10 million per episode
CERSEI’S ‘WALK OF SHAME’ cost $50,000 a day, for four days
BATTLE OF THE BLACKWATER
$8 million
THE ‘BATTLE OF THE BASTARDS’
took 25 days to shoot.
The episode also used
600 crew members, 500 extras,
70 horses, 160 tonnes of gravel,
25 stuntmen and 4 camera crews
