♻️ Partner Ecosystems Emerge as Primary Drivers of the Russian OTT Market

While the key trend of previous years focused on expanding in-house subscriber bases and selective title licensing, operators today are betting heavily on synergy. The “cinema-within-a-cinema” model, cross-selling subscriptions, and integrating libraries into third-party platforms have transformed into a strategic tool to overcome market stagnation.

According to the analytical agency J’son & Partners Consulting, it is this rapid expansion of partnerships that has shaped the industry’s current landscape. Dmitry Kolesov, Director of the agency’s New Technologies Department, attributes this tectonic shift to a natural slowdown in organic growth: the potential for expanding subscriber bases single-handedly has been virtually exhausted, while the costs of marketing and original content production have plummeted upward.

From License Sales to End-to-End Subscription Distribution

The most telling example of this new paradigm is the experience of the streaming service Start. In 2025, the video platform completely overhauled its B2B strategy, abandoning traditional licensing of its series in favor of integrating a fully-fledged partner subscription within the ecosystems of other market players. Under this scheme, Start manages the library, schedules premieres, and handles marketing, while the partner provides access to its multi-million audience.

As Start CEO Ilya Alekseev noted, betting on the “cinema-within-a-cinema” model has fully paid off, offsetting the loss of revenue from traditional licensing. By the end of 2025, Start’s paying user base grew to 9 million, and its subscription revenue increased by 68%, reaching 11.5 billion rubles. According to company estimates, the launch of this mechanic brought over 10 billion rubles in incremental revenue to the entire market, and by 2027, the potential of this segment could reach up to 40 billion rubles.

This win-win model benefits all parties involved: a major host platform (such as Kinopoisk) monetizes its loyal audience without direct production costs, while the content partner reduces its subscriber acquisition costs (SAC). At the same time, appearing on third-party screens obligates copyright holders to strictly maintain the pace and quality of original releases to preserve the storefront’s value.

Collaborations as a Market Standard

In the fall of 2025, Ivi and Kinopoisk signed a cross-subscription sales agreement. At the TeleMultiMedia Forum 2026, Pavel Sukhovarov, Commercial Director of the Kion cluster, also confirmed the platform’s readiness to deploy similar cross-products for user convenience. A trend toward consolidation is echoed by Tricolor as well: Marketing Director Mikhail Grin emphasized that viewers are tired of the abundance of fragmented apps and are looking for a single entry point. The operator already offers bundles combining Tricolor Cinema & TV, Premier, and Amediateka.

Meanwhile, Rutube intends to roll out its own platform model. David Kocharov, General Producer of Premier and Rutube, stated that the video hosting service successfully tested converting users into Premier ecosystem subscriptions and is now ready to act as a B2B distribution channel for third-party streaming services, promoting their digital storefronts and content channels.

The Evolution of Exclusives and the Shift to Transparent Content Showcases

The push for distribution alliances does not eliminate fierce competition for premium content. Wink CEO Anton Volodkin points out that while market production volumes have stabilized, the budgets for individual releases have soared. Under these conditions, high-quality exclusives remain the ultimate trump card. Wink, for instance, is deliberately reducing the number of co-produced Originals with other streamers (releasing only one joint series with Start this year), preferring to keep flagship releases on its own platform while actively driving synergy with linear TV channels.

However, experts identify the launch of a TV content “Showcase” (Vitrina) powered by Kinopoisk as the most fundamental structural shift in the market. This represents a radically different interaction model: broadcasters host their catalogs directly on the OTT platform’s infrastructure and receive a revenue share instead of a fixed licensing fee. The transparency of the scheme is ensured by providing copyright holders with dedicated dashboards featuring detailed viewership analytics.

The scale of these changes is backed by figures from J’son & Partners Consulting: while the revenue overlap between different OTT services stood at 8.6% in 2024, the figure rose to 11.6% by the end of 2025. This three-percentage-point jump in shared revenue within a single year proves that partner ecosystems have become the central and most resilient driver of media consumption growth in Russia.