KARACHI: Pakistan is in discussions with global streaming platforms including Netflix to increase the visibility of Pakistani films and television dramas, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said, as the government seeks to boost exports from the country’s creative industries.
In a post on X on Sunday, Iqbal said Pakistani dramas and films enjoy strong international demand but have been denied their “rightful” space on major streaming services because of regional politics. He said the government is seeking a more equitable regional framework with global platforms as part of its broader ‘Uraan Pakistan’ export strategy, while also pursuing a homegrown streaming service to show Pakistani stories worldwide.
Iqbal’s acknowledgement that the government is working towards developing “an independent Pakistani OTT platform” has sparked a debate over the viability of such a project. Industry experts believe that the country’s ambition to expand the global reach of its film and television industry will require far more than a domestic streaming platform.
Mubariz Siddiqui, a lawyer specialising in startups and technology companies, said Pakistan should have multiple streaming platforms, but the country should not look it as an either-or situation and must build an ecosystem where local OTTs “co-exist with global OTTs like Netflix”.
“Pakistan should have not one, but multiple streaming platforms,” Siddiqui told The News. “But the government should not be in this business at all. It is a completely private enterprise.”When asked if the country has the ability to run one as it previously failed to have a Pakistani TikTok several years ago, Siddiqui said that “creating a platform like TikTok is a completely different challenge because it relies on a massive number of independent creators to generate content. However, a streaming platform only needs content from a handful of established sources, perhaps five or six major production houses, to provide their original programming. This makes launching a streaming service a very different ball game compared to building a user-generated platform like TikTok”.
Siddiqui said local streaming platforms will only diversify storytelling if they commissioned original programming rather than simply migrating existing television catalogues behind subscription paywalls.
“However, if global giants like Netflix actively enter the market, the dynamics change completely because of the underlying economics. Currently, local networks produce content primarily for free-tier users, who either watch on television or via YouTube. Because these viewers generally have lower purchasing power, the ad-revenue monetisation is significantly lower than it would be for Western markets. A platform like Netflix, however, targets a global audience,” he said.
“We shouldn’t look at local content as strictly ‘Pakistani’; rather, we should view it as ‘desi’ (South Asian). Approximately one-fifth of the global population is desi, including a vast diaspora and audiences across India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, the UK and North America. Under a global platform, you can expect stories that, while featuring local cast and settings, are crafted to resonate with a much broader international audience. One only needs to look at the massive view counts on YouTube for individual drama episodes to see the scale of the existing demand for Pakistani content.”
Whether Pakistani consumers are willing to pay for local streaming services remains the industry’s central commercial question.Local platforms have largely struggled to build sustainable subscription businesses because much of the country’s television content remains freely available on YouTube or broadcast television.
“If viewers can watch the same content for free, there is little incentive to pay,” Siddiqui said. However, he argued that growing consumer familiarity with services such as Netflix, HBO and Spotify suggested the market had matured sufficiently to support paid digital subscriptions if platforms could offer compelling exclusive content.
Industry executives echoed many of those concerns in a year-old podcast discussion hosted by Siddiqui and shared by him with The News, arguing that Pakistan’s OTT sector remains heavily dependent on advertising-based video-on-demand (AVOD) while subscription-based video-on-demand (SVOD) remains underdeveloped.
Executives described subscription revenue as the missing element in Pakistan’s streaming business model, noting that recurring subscriber income underpins the economics of most successful international platforms.
Others cautioned that transitioning towards paid subscriptions would be challenging given relatively low purchasing power, widespread availability of free content and entrenched piracy. Industry participants said the country’s strongest opportunity may lie in partnerships between broadcasters, telecom operators and streaming platforms. Bundling streaming services with mobile data packages could significantly expand audiences while reducing customer acquisition costs, they said, leveraging Pakistan’s large mobile broadband subscriber base.
Executives also argued that collaboration among major broadcasters could help consolidate content libraries and create the scale needed to compete internationally, particularly among overseas South Asian audiences.
Such cooperation, however, remains unlikely given the competitive dynamics between major television networks.Siddiqui similarly argued that established broadcasters are better positioned than startups to build successful streaming businesses because they already own extensive content libraries.
“The single biggest obstacle to launching a successful OTT platform (and the reason I would not recommend this venture to new founders) is the necessity of exclusive content. Producing high-quality, exclusive programming is extremely capital-intensive,” he said.
“Consequently, the organisations best positioned to succeed are the established networks that already own rich content libraries. In an ideal scenario, these networks will collaborate to launch a single, co-owned streaming platform consolidating all their programming under one roof. While a unified platform like this will almost certainly succeed, it remains a pipe dream as these competitors rarely collaborate on joint ventures. Therefore, any new entrant wishing to build a viable OTT service must be prepared to invest a substantial amount of capital into developing original intellectual property (IP).”
