‘Still in nascent stage, pay-per-view streaming model has huge potential’

Did you miss Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick or Brad Pitt’s Bullet Train in cinemas and now want to watch the film at home?

- Niharika Lal

Try TVOD – Transactional Video On Demand – also known as pay-per-view, as these recent releases are available on rent across multiple platforms. When cinemas were shut in the beginning of the pandemic, viewers shifted to video-on-demand services in increasing numbers, but as people return to cinemas, TVOD is still clicking with a section of viewers, who purchase both old and new films.

TVOD IS TAKING BABY STEPS IN INDIA 

During Amazon Prime’s TVOD launch, Gaurav Gandhi from the platfor m said, “The TVOD movie rental service gives customers more choice in how they want to access and watch content. It enables them to pay per movie, instead of a flat monthly fee.” Zee also experimented with models of payper-view releases with their hybridised release of Salman Khan-starrer Radhe. Commenting on it, a Zee official had said then, “The payper-view format is meant to enable the audiences to make the choice as to where and when they want to consume the content that is available to them.”

The TVOD platform BookMyShow Stream was launched last year and Ashish Saksena, COO – Cinemas, BookMyShow, says, “TVOD has been amongst the most exciting spaces to be for content makers and studios alike, as the culture of ‘Pay for what you want to watch’ is fast gaining traction, rather than having multiple subscriptions. We have witnessed high interest and engagement across varied cross-sections of the audience for both rent and buy options.”