Is Radhe India's Version of 'Wrestlemania' to OTTs?

Being a long time WWE fan, it's excellent to see new Zee5-Radhe combo offer because a similar strategy did WONDERS for the WWE Network’s subscription base. What a great way for Bollywood to add explosive value to the OTT segment during the ‘Pandemic Era’.

Radhe will be the “Wrestlemania” for Zee5, which basically incentivises subscriptions like it did for the WWE Network.

Let’s look at how WWE used this strategy for their network: 

*Firstly, one needs to understand the basic content strategy of the WWE. There are two weekly shows “Raw & Smackdown” which build up to a monthly ‘super show’. The super show’s concept is to greatly advance, finish or start new story lines.

*The ‘super shows’ are typically towards the end of each month, and they too eventually connect to Wrestlemania – the yearly ‘super shows of super show’ or the “Super Bowl” of wrestling.

*The concept of Wrestlemania as a show was not only to draw mainstream attention, but also act as a ‘season ending’ to major story plot points (the WWE is not a typical TV series as it is year round).

*Now, when the promotion went OTT – with their “WWE Network”; they strategically offered WrestleMania ‘free’ with a rider that users had to sign up for a year or a month at $9.99 a month. This was eventually turned into a 1 month free trial commitment. This campaign was kicked off by Chairman Vince McMahon and mentioned several times on their TV shows amongst other marketing initiatives. 

 *The move was a massive success and here are a few charts that showcase its effectiveness in terms of sign ups.

 *The Wrestlemania OTT promotion was so well received, that WWE officials made this a regular feature & bundled it’s the offer with other super shows, eventually reducing the cost of sign ups on some of the smaller shows.

*Let’s understand from the User’s POV, what WWE Network’s real pitch was. As a hardcore fan, in the PPV era, one would have to pay an average of $30 – $70 per PPV (Super Show).

This works out to $600 a year only on PPVs! ($50 was the average PPV show x 12 shows a year) For a fan, Wrestlemania was typically a $60-70 purchase, so in essence for around a $120 a year ($9.99 * 12) you could not only watch Wrestlemania but watch all of the content library amassed by WWE, WCW, ECW, and other general entertainment shows around WWE’s stars on demand!

If you were a hardcore wrestler, this was tremendous value, as you could relieve any show you wanted to with over 20+ years of content all on demand.

 *After all this promotion, WWE Network managed a 1.5 Million Subscriber base by October 2020 before it’s deal with NBC’s Peacock in 2021.

If it took a super niche audience like wrestling fans many years to build up to 1.5 million for a WWE Network, can you imagine what a Salman Khan release with his fanbase is going to do with Zee5? Salman has a 50 million fan club on Facebook alone!

*Zee5’s pitch is very clear as seen below:

*Isn’t that a valuable proposition to any general fan or die hard Salman Khan fan to be incentivized to sign up & watch Zee’s content at only Rs. 42 per month vs. paying a one time Rs. 250 fee to watch only the movie?

*Lastly, the WWE Network model had a lot of ways for users to opt out, meaning that there was no upfront long term commitment, typically the commitment was $9.99 a month and users could opt out whenever they wanted to, will this be the case for Indian OTT players as well?

What will be more interesting is to note is that will Indian OTTs, release pending Bollywood blockbusters released like a “super show” once per month & will existing users get to watch these free or have to pay separately?

Interesting times ahead, let me know your thoughts!

Sources:

*ZEE5 Website

*WWE Network Wikipedia Page

* Free WrestleMania gets WWE Network to nearly 2 million subscribers - Cageside Seats