Malayalam actors’ body AMMA sells streaming rights of meeting: ‘Even got a bid for stars’ arrival for Rs 5 lakh’

AMMA official Idavela Babu reveals what led to the decision of selling the streaming rights for its general body meeting

Idavela Babu, Mammootty, Mohanlal, Maniyanpilla Raji and Shweta Menon at this year's AMMA general body meeting

While the Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes (AMMA) have been in the news for some of its questionable stances in the past few years, the Malayalam actors’ body arguably became the first-ever such organisation in the country to sell the streaming rights of its meeting.

The rights of AMMA’s general body meeting, which was held last week and was attended by superstars such as Mohanlal and Mammootty, were sold to a YouTube channel.

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When OTTplay got in touch with AMMA official Idavela Babu to know the reason for this endeavour, the actor said, “We had our own YouTube channel and social media platforms that were handled by our committee. We had streamed snippets from last year’s general body meeting on these platforms and got positive feedback too. However, these platforms weren’t active because due to reasons we had decided to stop all social-media activities by AMMA. That’s how we decided to invite bids and sell the streaming rights.”

The rights were procured by Movie World Media. “Apart from the meeting’s content, everything else will be streamed; that was the condition. Earlier, this was all streamed by other media channels for free. This time, we even got a bid just for the stars’ arrival to the venue for Rs 5 lakh, but the winning bid for covering everything was Rs 10 lakh,” he says. “We were able to generate more income from the deal than when we had streamed on our own YouTube channel last year.”

Ask him if the money will be used for charity activities that AMMA has been formed for and he says, “Our meeting expenses itself cost more than Rs 20 lakh.”

During this year’s meeting, Mohanlal launched AMMA’s digital ID card by handing the first card to Mammootty. Actors such as Binu Pappu, Nikhila Vimal and Sanju Sivaram were also granted membership, while Sreenath Bhasi’s was temporarily put on hold due to the issues cited by the producers’ body.

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