IbakaTV, Globacom to Drive Market Penetration of Nollywood Content

In a bid to expand revenue generation for the Nigerian film industry, indigenous streaming platform IbakaTV, in collaboration with Nigerian owned telecommunications company Globacom, recently announced a series of unrestricted data bundle packages that will enable consumers to maximize subscription plans of the video-on-demand over the top (OTT) service.

The new bundle service, which is launched today, December 10, 2021, is exclusively available to Globacom subscribers. Some of its packages detailed during its launch include a flagship offering of 119 gigabytes of data for a yearly fee of N24,000.

Going by content volume, Nollywood is the second biggest film industry globally. Unfortunately, its revenue generation hasn’t matched this figure it boasts. According to the MD of IbakaTV, Blessed Idornigie, the limiting factor against the full commercialisation of Nollywood contents is market penetration.

“Despite all the promises and projections, the industry has not been able to convert all of its potentials into a meaningful revenue generation,” Idornigie noted at the launch which had Nollywood heavyweights like Segun Arinze, Saheed Balogun, prolific filmmaker Kunle Afolayan, and singer Jaywon.

He continued: “The reason the industry is faced with this challenge is lack of market penetration, which is market accessibility and market affordability that stems from a lack of investment in infrastructure”

Understanding that all packages it provides may not fully cater to the needs of consumers in terms of high definition (HD) streaming, the platform provides options on its app that enable consumers to stream at lower resolution to save data.

On his part, Director, QuestechMedia Consulting Ltd, Emeka Mba, said that the initiative of data bundling will help Nollywood achieve a better standing among its counterparts globally through streaming numbers and revenue generation. He also advised that the partnership should be leveraged in a manner that brings about diversification in the digital ecosystem.