Zee5’s Global Streaming Service will now aggregate several smaller Indian streamers for the US market in a push for dominance of that niche. Blake & Wang's entertainment attorney Los Angeles, Brandon Blake, shares the details.
New Languages, New Programming
The deal will also boost several South East Asian languages on the Zee5 Global streaming service, bringing together programming from Indian streaming services Simply South, Chaupal, Oho Gujarati, NammaFlix, iStream, and EPIC ON are already on board, with six more services to be added over the next few months. Their current plan is to announce a new service every month. This will be paid through the Zee5 platform as a single service, with personalized recommendations. Zee5 Global currently offers around 250,000 hours of acquired programming across TV shows, movies, and even some originals.
A Major Merger
This expansion will be under the newly branded Zee5 Global Add-ons options package and is another expansion of their service base in the face of their upcoming merger with Sony Pictures India’s business. They are targeting the ‘diaspora audience’ base heavily, with the intent to build language and culture-specific monetization opportunities to carve out a niche in the increasingly crowded streaming universe. Zee5 Global already has a reasonably strong domestic US presence, and they’re hoping to create a kind of ‘group pull’ for the brand that is more attractive than splitting marketing focus over a range of niche streaming apps.
While we focus mostly on the Hollywood and US entertainment markets, this has been a strong year for South Asian entertainment offerings, with some films even making it to a wider cinematic release here in the US. It will be interesting to see if Zee5 succeeds in their plans to centralize and commercialize that space for the domestic market, to bring it fully into line as a ‘contender’ for subscribers and advertisers alike to service its limited target demographics.
