VietNamNet Bridge - The content industry is expected to control the OTT game, and content producers will design the rules of the game, experts believe.  

Television shows are losing viewers as people tend to shift to content on the internet. The internet has also led to a considerable reduction in TV revenue from ads. Television companies have no other choice than to join the OTT game.

“OTT is coming as fast as a ‘flood’ and there is no way to stop it. It is necessary to find a way to live with the flood,” said Phan Thanh Gian, director of Clip TV.

“Television has to compete fairly with internet-based content providers, including foreign giants such as YouTube, NetFlix and Facebook,” Gian said.

Television shows are losing viewers as people tend to shift to content on the internet. The internet has also led to a considerable reduction in TV revenue from ads. Television companies have no other choice than to join the OTT game.

It took cable television 10 years to obtain 3 million subscribers. But it took YouTube only one year in Vietnam to exceed the number of subscribers compared to cable TV subscribers. 

Television revenue is flowing to OTT service providers. NetFlix and Facebook are providing content to Vietnam and have obtained relatively high revenue.

Content and technology firms, internet service providers and television stations all have jumped into the OTT battle. However, content producers may die because of the lack of technology, while technology masters may wither because of weak content.

While television’s revenue has been flowing into OTT service providers, content is the ‘king’ and not influenced by the OTT ‘flood’. 

Those who can control content will be the designers of the rules. In Vietnam, households may be clients of two or three different service providers. 

Gian believes that dramas, not movies, which are shown on large screens, will be the future of the film industry, because dramas are reserved for OTT. 

In the US, many film studios only make films for OTT, to be broadcast on internet, not at cinema. In 2016, China released 2,500 online films.

An analyst commented that the biggest problem of Vietnamese OTT businesses is that while they are strong at technology, they are weak at making content. As a result, many of them have to buy content at high prices. 

Meanwhile, consumption behaviors in Vietnam are different from that in the US. 

The number of American people paying to watch TV and VOD films are nearly the same. But, in Vietnam, people only pay to watch TV and unlicensed VODs. This is wh many OTT businesses had to leave the market.

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