New Delhi, July 20 -- The recent takedown of Satluj, the biographical film starring Diljit Dosanjh based on the Punjab insurgency of the 1990s, highlights the multiple fronts that OTT platforms lose on when content is taken off air.

Platforms spend heavily to acquire a title long before anyone presses play. There is the licence fee, usually the largest cheque, and then everything built around it: the trailer, the digital and hoarding campaign, the influencer push, the premiere and the prime slot on the home screen.

For a star vehicle, that runs into crores of rupees. When a film is pulled two days in, as Satluj was from ZEE5, none of the money comes back. The licence is sunk, the marketing has bought no subscribers and the platform is l...