Tata Sky partners with Amazon to offer OTT bundle

Hit by the rise of OTTs and users moving to free-to-air TV, Tata Sky has tied up with Amazon to offer an OTT bundle along with Amazon Fire TV Stick under a new offering Tata Sky Binge.

It will allow subscribers to stream digital content from across a diverse mix of apps through a single platform and subscription fee.

Tata Sky Binge will initially offer digital content from Hotstar, Sun NXT, Eros NOW, Hungama Play via a single subscription fee. Subscribers will also have access to over 5,000 titles from the Tata Sky VOD library along with TV shows of the past seven days. Tata Sky Binge will be available to Tata Sky subscribers at ₹249 a month.

In April last year, Tata Sky had announced its partnership with Netflix to enable subscribers get access to Netflix. But it is yet to launch Netflix plans.

“ Per se the partnership is still work in progress. But with Fire TV stick, you can still watch Netflix outside of Binge app on Fire TV,” Pallavi Puri, Chief Commercial Officer, Tata Sky, told BusinessLine .

She said this is the first step in partnering with OTT players.

“As partners sign up, we’ll bring them on board and inform customers. Pricing models will also evolve. With the partners we have and with Fire TV, customers have to pay ₹249 now. Once we start seeing what customers want and once we have the right content, everything changes,” Puri said.

Puri said the service is targeted to customers with broadband and Wifi at home.

With the TRAI tariff order coming into effect, several subscribers have moved to free dish or OTT platforms that offer catch up TV — re-runs of popular shows. The shift, though small for now, can create a huge impact on the revenues of cable and DTH providers. Partnering with OTTs helps Tata Sky offer the best of both worlds to its subscribers.

Puri said the company is not betting on the Binge offering to rake in large numbers of new subscribers, but it can help the existing ones to get access to more content in a more seamless way.

New subscribers to Tata Sky Binge will also get three months of Amazon Prime access which means, unlimited access to popular movies and TV shows with Prime Video. Puri said the company will reevaluate the pricing after three months to assess whether customers will continue to have access to Amazon Prime or will have to pay additional cost.

Parag Gupta, Head of Amazon Devices, India, “ With Tata Sky Binge, now, more customers will have access to thousands of TV shows and movies, all through one easy-to-use app. We can’t wait to hear what customers think of the new Amazon Fire TV Stick – Tata Sky Edition.”

Tata Sky will not charge customers for the Amazon Fire TV Stick and customers will get an option to return it after a month if they are not happy with the service, Puri said. “There is no lock-in with the service.”

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