OTT 6-month report: ‘Panchayat 3’ is the most watched show

The half-yearly report of the Indian streaming space reflects how the biggest titles of the first six months of 2024 fared in viewership. The titles that made it to the top across formats (unscripted and fiction web series) include the most talked about shows this year such as Anil Kapoor hosted ‘Bigg Boss OTT 3’, ‘Panchayat S3’, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Heeramandi’, Rohit Shetty’s ‘Indian Police Force’ and others.

According to Ormax’s mid-year OTT report, Prime Video’s ‘Panchayat 3’ lived up to its popularity and expectations as it emerged as the most-watched Hindi web series so far. Garnering 28.2 million views, the ‘TVF’ show had a considerable lead among every other show released in the last six months.

The next best to follow was Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s much-talked-about ‘Heeramandi’, which garnered 20.3 million views. The ‘Netflix’ show opened to mixed reactions but remained a dominant talking point on the internet thanks to memes and trolling the series was subjected to. The other shows in the top five are ‘Indian Police Force’ (19.5 million) and ‘Kota Factory S3’.

Five platforms feature on the list, with ‘Disney+ Hotstar’ leading with five entries. The only AVOD series to feature on the list is ‘Jamnapaar’ (‘Amazon miniTV’), the report noted.

‘Bigg Boss OTT S3’ was the most-watched Indian unscripted show in the first half of 2024. At 17.8 million, the Anil Kapoor-hosted show ranked number one on the list, followed by Netflix’s ‘The Great Indian Kapil Show’ at 14.5 million and ‘Shark Tank India 3’ at 12.5 million. “The four properties with 10 million viewership belong to different genres, indicating the potential for diversity of formats in non-fiction on OTT,” the report noted.