Why collaborating with competitors is a win-win in the world of OTT content players

“The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.” – Henry Ford

For many businesses, competition is a constant motivator to stay ahead and improve their offering, ensuring that their customers stay well away from competitors. However, for some industries collaborating with competitors can yield better results than competing against them. While this might sound weird, for Over The Top (OTT) content players, this is a very prosperous strategy.

According to a recent article in Business Line, content creation requires a lot of time, strategy, ideas, and investment. Thus, to increase efficiency and to share content more easily, OTT players are partnering with each other. For example, AltBalaji has tied up with OTT platform YuppTV, and SonyLiv has joined hands with Arré to reach out to a larger audience base with differentiated content.

“The main aspect in these collaborations is access to good quality content. Most OTT companies today are content players as well as delivery engines. In that scenario, it is about widening reach as well as revenues. And that can happen faster through tie-ups than through competition,” Mritunjay Kapur, Head – Technology, Media and Telecom at KPMG India, told BusinessLine.

To get a better understanding of how this works and why this industry is unique, we spoke with James Patrick, who works in Growth & Content Strategy for Unreel.me, the leading platform for networks and publishers launching OTT streaming services, who says “On its face, seeking out opportunities to lend content to competitive  streaming services might seem counterintuitive. The truth is, if the content is compelling, leveraging the audience of a rival to market and supplement revenue can be a boon for any OTT streaming service.”

He adds “With such a fragmented market, a significant portion of viewers on a rival’s streaming service are not on your own.  By exposing a competitor’s audience to a some, but not all of your content, you suddenly increase your reach and have the chance to attract new users to your streaming service.”

While there is no doubt that top OTT services like Unreel are making their own businesses better all the time, it is clear that there is also plenty of opportunities to do so while collaborating with potential competitors, creating a win-win for everyone involved.