How Scam 1992 Helped Sony Liv Enter the Rat-race to Become India’s Top Ott Platform?

Scam 1992 - The Harshad Mehta Story has created a storm in the Indian OTT scene with its sheer brilliance. The show, which released on Sony Liv on the 9th of October, has sort of introduced a different form of storytelling wherein serious issues or stories can be told in a very massy, entertaining style. It is this mix of mass storytelling and class treatment that has made every aspect of the show, a hot-topic among cinephiles across the nation. There is no dearth in praises for each aspect of the show, be it acting, writing, direction, music, camera work, etc.

Scam 1992 is based on the true events that happened behind the Harshad Mehta scam which involved fraudulent activities worth approximately ten thousand crores. The show, which has been directed by the critically acclaimed director, Hansal Mehta, who has previously made films such as Shahid and Aligarh, has had a rippling effect on the lives of everyone who, in whatever way, were involved in making the show come alive.

All the actors from the show, especially Pratik Gandhi have gotten huge acclaim for portraying every character with utmost sincerity. Pratik, who plays the role of Harshad Mehta, has gotten huge popularity after the release and the huge spike in his Instagram followers says it all. But the most important thing that the show has done is that it has successfully revived the dead spirit of Sony Liv, the OTT platform owned by Sony Pictures Network India Pvt. Ltd, on which the show got released.

Scam 1992 has become the face of Sony Liv and has brought the said platform a huge number of subscribers. It’s not an unknown fact that Sony Liv was struggling very hard to keep up with its competitors in terms of subscription and content. Much of the content on the platform was substandard and whatever few shows or films the platform had bought, weren’t giving them a major hike in terms of subscription.

Their marketing strategy had also proved to be a huge misfire and failed to create a significant buzz among the general audience. Sony Liv was also among the few OTT platforms that were said to have recorded very less numbers of subscribers during this year and was losing to other big platforms that have also recently entered the Indian market such as Disney+hotstar or even Zee5. But things changed drastically for them during October when Scam 1992 debuted on the platform with a bang.

The show had already created a massive buzz among the general audience with its trendy first looks and catchy background score. Things were looking good for Sony but even they wouldn’t have anticipated the kind of praise the show got. In a recent interview, a senior executive of Sony Liv said that the platform has recorded a record-breaking hike in the number of subscribers with a huge 143% increment in October and November. The word-of-mouth around the show was so strong that people were compelled to buy the platform’s subscription and join in on the craze around the show.

It has almost been two months since the show aired on Sony Liv but it looks like the craze for the show is still going strong. People are still talking about it and the people at Sony Liv couldn’t be happier with the progress that they have made in these two months. Scam was truly their last ray of hope in surviving the cut-throat competition in the OTT space in India and it finally seems like all their hard work has finally paid off.

Sony Liv has officially entered the rat-race to become India’s top streaming platform alongside some of the biggest names in OTT such as Netflix, Amazon, etc. Time will only tell whether Sony Liv will be able to sustain its number or not but from whatever they have done after Scam, it does seem like they are in for the long haul. Their new film, Halahal is getting huge praises from critics all around the country.