Prime Video India is adding Sony LIV as an add-on subscription, giving its customers a direct route to Sony’s entertainment and sports catalogue from inside the Prime Video app. The add-on is priced at ₹399 a month or ₹1,499 a year.
For the screen business, the deal is less about any single title and more about what it says about platform strategy: streaming services are becoming distribution shelves, not just content owners.
What the add-on actually includes
The Sony LIV add-on brings a sizeable library and a live sports calendar to Prime Video. It includes:
- More than 450 movies and 300 shows, alongside on-demand content.
- Originals such as the Scam franchise and Gullak, plus films including Sitaare Zameen Par.
- Daily TV from Sony SET and Sony SAB, including Kaun Banega Crorepati and Indian Idol.
- Live sports rights including bilateral India cricket, the UEFA Champions League, the French Open, the Commonwealth Games and UFC, plus India’s cricket tour of New Zealand.
The price is built for retention
At ₹399 a month, the add-on sits at an impulse-purchase price for existing Prime members. But the annual option at ₹1,499 is the more important number: it works out to roughly ₹125 a month, a steep discount to the monthly plan.
That structure pushes subscribers toward a one-year commitment, which lowers churn and gives both platforms more predictable revenue. For marketers, it is a classic yearly-plan anchoring play: show the monthly rate, then make the annual rate feel like the obvious value.
Why the distribution angle matters
Prime Video does not need to own Sony LIV’s catalogue to benefit from it. By hosting the add-on, Prime Video adds daily television viewing cadence and a near-continuous live sports calendar, which are hard to replicate with a purely on-demand library.
Sony LIV, meanwhile, gets shelf space inside Prime Video’s billing, search and recommendation systems, lowering the friction of signing up for another standalone service. Gaurav Bhasin, Head – AVOD Business and Marketplace at Prime Video India, said the ambition is to make Prime Video “the ultimate entertainment destination” for customers.
Rajesh Kaul, Chief Revenue Officer and Business Head – Sports and International at SPNI, framed the partnership as another way to make Sony LIV available wherever audiences choose to watch, with live sports and Originals remaining central to its proposition.
What media planners should watch
For buyers and planners, add-on bundles change the unit of comparison. A streaming plan is no longer just a single catalogue; it is a base subscription plus optional layers for sports, local-language TV or prestige Originals. That changes how budgets are allocated between standalone OTT plans and bundled shelf space.
The immediate test is whether Sony LIV’s live sports and daily TV cadence pull incremental sign-ups inside Prime Video, or mainly convert viewers who would have subscribed to Sony LIV directly anyway. The answer will determine whether more Indian streaming partnerships follow.
Source: Deadline
