Bangladesh is the third-largest video gaming market in South Asia and 61st globally in a ranking of 100 countries thanks to robust growth of internet users and smartphone penetration.

The country’s video gaming market is worth about $62.22 million or nearly Tk 500 crore a year, according to Newzoo, a leading provider of market intelligence of global games, e-sports, and mobile markets.

In South Asia, Bangladesh lags behind India and Pakistan but is ahead of Sri Lanka. Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan could not grab a place in the top 100.

The report, published for the first time recently, was based on data available up to December last year. Newzoo officials told The Daily Star that they collected information from various sources in respective country as well as global market.

India was ranked 19th with a market size of $521.11 million while Pakistan was placed on 53rd position with its gaming market valuing at $109.05 million. Sri Lanka’s market is valued at $34.52 million.

“Our revenue estimates are calculated in a model using a variety of inputs, such as quarterly results from public and private companies, transactional of different application store’s data, our consumer research outcomes from 27 countries, population data, internet penetration rates and economic data,” said Cleo Sardelis, marketing and communications manager of Newzoo.

According to the report, there were 26.46 million internet users in Bangladesh in 2016, meaning every consumer spent Tk 188 for playing games in the same year on an average.

However, the total number of internet connections stood at about 66.62 million at the end of last year, according to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.

Video games developers said although there is no official study on the size of games market in Bangladesh, the new figure seems reliable.

Ashraf Abir, managing director of MCC Ltd, a leading mobile app and games developer, said the games market accounts for 10 percent of the Tk 8,000 crore ICT market in Bangladesh.

“Newzoo is a renowned research firm in this segment and we can rely on its study,” said Abir.

Developers also say the gaming market is dominated by the free games segment, which also helps expand the market’s total revenue as the ad market is also linked to it. 

Only 5,000 to 10,000 gamers purchase video games, according to SM Mahabub Alam, managing director of MassiveStar Studio Ltd, the country’s first commercial video game developer. “Though 90 percent people want free games, it is valuable from advertisement perspective.”

Games developers say the gaming market is growing very fast keeping pace with the robust growth of internet users and smartphone penetration.

Last year the country’s total internet connections went up by 23.10 percent, while smartphone imports shot up 45.72 percent to 8.2 million units.

Mustafa Jabbar, president of Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services, said the gaming market is growing fast in terms of revenue as the number of gamers is increasing every day.

“But we are lagging behind because our game developers don’t come forward with unique ideas. Most ideas are copied. This is frustrating,” said Jabbar.

If local developers fail to grab the local market then it will be occupied by international companies, he said.

The government has undertaken a project worth Tk 281.97 crore for games development. The project will be implemented by next year and targets to grab a share of the $100 billion global games market.

China secured the top position in the Newzoo ranking with $24.27 billion gaming market and it has 746.94 million internet users. Second-placed US has a gaming market of $23.46 billion with 250.82 million internet users.

Japan ($12.43 billion), Germany ($4.10 billion) and South Korea ($4.05 billion) rounded up the top six markets.

It’s the prefix of the season—super. Add it to any word you can think of. And Nitesh Kripalani, country head of Amazon Prime Video, applies it with the felicity of any youthful startup chief executive out there: the customer segment for online video is ‘super-small’ in India. But Amazon’s local customers are ‘super-interested’ in video. Data charges are ‘super-important’ for them. So Amazon, he says, is making sure data consumption for video is ‘superlow’ while ensuring visual quality is ‘super-high’.

It’s hard to miss when Kripalani, in his late 30s, can go super six times in a five-minute span. But what’s behind etailer Amazon’s interest in online video—that too, a paid-subscription service— when its old nemesis Google’s YouTube pretty much built the advertising-supported market in India click by click?

The answer calls for a perspective of over-the-top (OTT) video on connected devices (laptop, smartphones, tablets, and smart televisions) in the past 15 months, against the incumbent cable and satellite television (TV) market in India.

The latter was a formidable Rs 47,500-crore market in fiscal year 2015, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). In contrast, OTT video is less than 20% of the Rs 7,300-crore digital advertising spends in 2016 (an estimate by advertising media company GroupM). Yet, this segment with few revenue shoots is seen as the next big thing in a market ruled by prepaid mobile customers.

The Indian Viewer
Internet-video services like Hotstar, Netflix or Amazon Prime are called ‘over-thetop’ because they don’t ride on traditional broadcasting or single-telecom networks. Thanks to net neutrality, OTT video doesn’t require any affiliation with any operator.

In 2011, the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Amendment Act pushed local cable operators to digitise networks—basically organise the market (see ‘TV Market Gets Organised’). Call this traditional TV, where a single cable or satellite TV subscription is consumed by a household whose industry average is five viewers. Even with a conservative estimate of four persons per household, this is more than 700 million viewers.

In comparison, OTT video growth has been tangential to traditional TV market, thanks to price competition among smartphone brands, as well as between telecom operators after Reliance Jio’s largesse to unveil 4G networks. In 15 months, the online segment for video rose from 66 million unique users in 2015 to more than 80 million in end 2016.

It’s not the 15% growth that is exciting broadcasting networks (Star Networks, Tata Sky), content owners (Yash Raj Films, Balaji Telefilms) and telcos (Vodafone, Airtel) to push for OTT. It is the behavioural or habit shift that caught their eye.

“When distribution becomes free because of the internet to directly access consumers, then competition keeps the market honest,” says a digital media entrepreneur. “The distribution (cable) guy is not king—consumer is actually king.” “In absolute terms, the 80-million number is significant,” says Vidya S Nath, director, digital media, Frost Sullivan, adding that it is the population of European nations like France or Germany, where traditional cable networks are under threat. “We have got to this scale without adequate broadband infrastructure support,” she adds. The icing on the cake: “These are unique viewers, each of whom is present on one or more platforms.” Services led by data analytics of unique viewer habits make for more sharply-targeted advertisements – the raison d’etre of Google or even Hotstar, the OTT brand of Star Networks which has more than 70 million mobile-device installations.

Of the 80 million online viewers in India, the paid-subscriber base was at a minuscule 2 million last year. There is a 40% drop expected after promotional offers expire on services like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Currently, Frost Sullivan pegs industry revenue from paid subscriptions at $8.5 million. That’s why it raises the intriguing question: What’s Amazon Prime thinking by bringing video as a paid-service when everybody else is fighting for the ad rupee?

A digital-media industry source, who has worked with content owners and telecom operators for more than a decade, notes this has to do with Amazon’s global strategy of high engagement on its platform. Just like in the US, Amazon is giving a lot more value for Prime than just providing video. “Video is clubbed with instant e-commerce delivery (for Rs 499 per year). You don’t pay extra for faster deliveries,” he says. Further, video helps Amazon because consumers keep returning to the platform, even when they are not shopping online for products. “For Amazon, investing in Prime Video is like investing in customer retention.”

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos no less spelt it out in the 2015 shareholder letter, justifying large spends on creating original video content a la Netflix. “(Video) shows are great for customers and they feed the Prime flywheel – members who watch Prime Video are more likely to convert from free trial to a paid membership and to renew annual subscriptions. … Prime has become an all-you-caneat, physical-digital hybrid that members love.” Amazon’s video play, which is less than four months old, cannot be seen in isolation of its overall digital ambitions, even in India.

Hunger Games
The first users of internet in the US were for paid-utilities like shopping (eBay, Amazon) and internet-enabled home services, apart from email. But in India’s next wave of growth, online users will consume video before buying products online. That’s the bet. “The top three app growth categories in India are music, media and entertainment,” says Pratik Poddar, vice-president at Nexus Venture Partners, a venture-capital (VC) firm in Mumbai. “People are hungry for content and we are seeing significant behaviour change where many users are spending more than 15 minutes a day on new content destination companies.”

If Amazon can ensure customer stickiness after getting new users from its OTT service, it can enhance their ecommerce business in the next wave of growth. For this, Prime Video has tied up with mobile operator Vodafone (and is exploring other such partnerships) to tap into new prepaid mobile customers. Until then, Amazon is focusing on increasing customer engagement on Prime, and converting Amazon in users to Prime subscribers.

Google and Facebook have done this naturally beyond core search and social network businesses, respectively. Until 2015-end, a lion’s share of the OTT market belonged to YouTube, part of the Google arsenal. And WhatsApp, a Facebook company, is emerging as a dominant channel for videos to go viral apart from the parent company’s video ambitions.

“Customers here are watching digital content for free, either via an advertising-supported video service, or because pirated video services are still high,” Kripalani explains. “But Amazon customers are super-interested in video. They are engaging with the service, our content selection, which is making Prime a high-growth product. It is reflecting in our consumption and sign-up figures.”

In the US, the $136-billion online retail giant has added Reading (Kindle-based), Twitch (gaming), Audible Channels (audio content), and Photo Family Vault as new Primeexclusive digital benefits last year. Stratecherry, a subscription-based newsletter featuring analysis of tech and media news, quoted a Consumer Intelligent Research Partners estimate in March 2016 that Amazon has 54 million Prime members, “which at $99/member would generate $5.3 billion in revenue” globally. Like in India, Prime Video is available at no extra cost to Amazon Prime members in Belgium, Canada, France, Italy and Spain.

The OTT fight between YouTube, Netflix and Amazon has been more than a wake-up call for broadcasters, telecom operators and content creators who are rejigging plans for the OTT consumer.

“They have to move,” says Brian Morris, general manager of global media and entertainment services at Tata Communications. “If they want to stay competitive, and provide reach to mobile consumers, OTT is not an option. It is a requirement.”

Launched in February 2015, Hotstar has stood out for its timing and heavy investment in marketing the brand whose live sports events usher in masses of users. “The biggest gain in OTT is from Indian Premier League T20 Cricket, which is why Hotstar is what it is,” Nath says. A sports series guarantees mobile-video platforms of 5-10 million users depending on the targeted geography.

Content Wins
OTT video means customers increase their data consumption, and mobile operators will see average revenue per user go up. Content owners too can choose from a range of platforms. They are in the spotlight. Only Much Louder (OML), which manages shows for comedy and live events for brands like All India Bakchod (AIB), are working with two OTT companies, Hotstar and Amazon Prime.

“The marketing heavy-lifting by these guys like what Hotstar is doing for On Air With AIB and what Amazon has been doing with comedy specials (14 stand-up comedy episodes of an hour each) has definitely got us new fans,” says Ajay Nair, director of OML. “With Amazon Prime or Hotstar, I know the subscriber is going to spend time there.”

The battle is on for content, as Netflix alone added 600 hours of original programming – apart from licensed TV shows and movies – to its year-old service here. In absolute numbers, online video advertising dominates subscription figures, but that is not sustainable as Vice Media, a digital media company headquartered in New York discovered in North America. (Times Group which publishes The Economic Times has a partnership with Vice.)

CEO Shane Smith says advertising cannot be a long-term solution with Google and Facebook having four-fifths of that pie. “We have an entire generation which has not seen advertisement because of ad-blocking, iTunes and Netflix,” he noted. Morris of Tata Communications says the revenue model has not been discovered yet anywhere around the world. On that front, Amazon Prime knows there is no such thing as a free lunch. It is a risky gambit for OTT in India, but smart for its consolidated plans.

Wendy Clark, the CEO of DDB North America, took part in a panel session on mobility and content at a March 28 event co-sponsored by Adweek and Bloomberg Media called “Marketing in an Interruptive World.” After her session with fellow marketers and Bloomberg’s U.S. director of research and senior media analyst Paul Sweeney was over, Clark shared her thoughts about video with Adweek.

“No consumer simply uses one medium,” Clark told Adweek. “They lead an integrated life and use integrated media.”

For more, watch the video above. Here’s more about the Adweek-Bloomberg breakfast event.

A day after charging a 14-year-old boy in the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl that was carried on Facebook Live, police said on Sunday that they were seeking the arrest of a 15-year-old boy in connection with the crime.

Police are also trying to identify others who took part in the assault, officials said, but the investigation has been slowed by the trauma experienced by the girl.

« She’s just having such a difficult time even communicating what occurred to her, » Cmdr. Brendan Deenihan said at a news conference at Chicago police headquarters. « We obviously have a video of the incident, so we have verifiable objective evidence of what occurred to this young lady, but she’s just having a very difficult time.

« On top of it, there’s constant social media … bullying (of the girl), making fun of what occurred. This is just a very traumatic incident. »

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Neil Gorsuch almost certainly will end this week confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. And the Senate’s rules — indeed, the institutional character of the chamber — seem just as sure to end up severely eroded.

Senate Democrats are quickly closing in on the 41 votes needed to block the nomination of President Donald Trump’s first pick for the Supreme Court. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his GOP ranks aren’t backing down in the face of the filibuster threat, continuing to insist that Gorsuch will be installed as the next high court justice, whether Democrats like it or not.

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The competing postures mean the Senate is hurtling toward the use later this week of the so-called nuclear option — changing the chamber’s rules with a simple majority so that Supreme Court filibusters can be cut off with just 51 votes, rather than the long-required 60-vote threshold.

Democrats say Gorsuch, who is expected to be approved by the Judiciary Committee on Monday, has only himself to blame for not earning their support.

“When Gorsuch refused to answer the most rudimentary questions in the hearings, after there were many doubts about him to begin with … there was a seismic change in my caucus,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And it’s highly, highly unlikely that he’ll get 60.”

As of Sunday, 37 Senate Democrats had confirmed they would vote to filibuster Gorsuch, according to a POLITICO tally. Just three Democrats — Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, all moderates up for reelection next year — have said they support the federal appellate judge from Colorado.

Technically, enough Democrats remain undecided to stave off a successful filibuster: Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Chris Coons of Delaware, Dianne Feinstein of California, Angus King of Maine (King is an independent who caucuses with Democrats), Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, and Mark Warner of Virginia. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) opposes Gorsuch’s confirmation but hasn’t endorsed filibustering him.

Still, the broad expectation on Capitol Hill is that Gorsuch will be the first Supreme Court nominee successfully filibustered since Abe Fortas for chief justice in 1968. Warner — who has expressed concerns about Gorsuch’s decisions and his conservative track record — has said he would vote the same way on cloture as they would on confirmation, leaving Gorsuch’s current path to 60 votes exceedingly narrow.

More announcements from Democrats are expected after the Judiciary Committee clears Gorsuch’s nomination on Monday. King said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he’ll likely announce his decision on Tuesday or Wednesday.

“I don’t think we know,” whether eight Democrats will help Republicans break a Gorsuch filibuster, McConnell said on “Fox News Sunday.” But he added: “What I’m telling you is that Judge Gorsuch is going to be confirmed. The way in which that occurs is in the hands of the Democratic minority.”

The confrontation is years in the making.

Republicans point to Democrats’ repeated use of the filibuster for judicial nominees under the George W. Bush administration, including Miguel Estrada, who would have been the first Latino to sit on the influential D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Democrats also tried to block Samuel Alito, but 72 senators helped advance the now-Supreme Court justice past the procedural hurdle.

The so-called Gang of 14 helped defuse the nominations war under Bush by agreeing not to filibuster judicial nominees except under extraordinary circumstances. But in 2013, Senate Democrats invoked the nuclear option for all presidential nominees except for the Supreme Court after Republicans, then in the minority, repeatedly blocked nominees from President Barack Obama.

Republicans further inflamed the situation last year by essentially ignoring Merrick Garland, whom Obama nominated in March 2016 to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, because it was an election year. In January, Trump nominated Gorsuch as his pick for Scalia’s seat.

Schumer insisted Sunday that because neither side got — or, without the use of the nuclear option, will get — its preferred nominee to replace Scalia, Republicans should work with Democrats to pick a more consensus candidate.

“Our Republican friends are acting like, you know, they’re a cat on the top of a tree and they have to jump off with all the damage that entails,” Schumer said Sunday. “Come back off the tree, sit down, and work with us and we will produce a mainstream nominee.”

But substantive talks toward a compromise have not materialized. And senators from both parties are now acknowledging the inevitable: not just the nuclear option but a continued demise of the unique traditions of the Senate.

“We find ourselves where both sides of the aisle have basically taken this place into the ditch,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told reporters last week. “Every time one side gets the advantage, they say if the other side were in our position, this is what they’d do. So we continue to spiral down.”