Disney+ Hotstar Retains Indian Streaming Market Lead Despite IPL Cricket Loss — Study
Disney+ Hotstar lost the rights to offer Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket last year, but the streamer remains India’s market leader, according to Ampere Analysis.
The Disney-owned service has a 29% share of India’s 171 million streaming subscribers, Ampere’s latest report reveals — about 50 million subs as of Q1 2023. Rivals Prime Video and Netflix trail behind with 12.4 million and 6.2 million, respectively.
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Disney+ Hotstar has lost some subs, but Ampere predicts it will remain the market leader for some time to come, as it moves to a strategy for profitability and increasing ARPU (average revenue per user). Its key titles include the Indian remakes of The Night Manager and Criminal Justice, and it offers many Disney, Lucasfilm and Marvel titles.
Last year, Disney pulled out of the bidding for the IPL, which is among the world’s most-watched and most-valuable sporting events. Thought the Twenty20 cricket tournament had been considered a key driver in the service’s growth, the estimated $2.6B it cost auction winner Viacom18 to take the rights was considered too rich. Disney did retain the TV rights to the tournament.
According to Ampere, cost management around sports rights has become a key focus. Dropping out of the IPL race would have saved the service “a figure just short of twice its entire streaming revenue for the past five years.”
Hotstar has also dropped some key licensing pacts. Most notably, we revealed in February the agreement with Warner Bros Discovery for HBO titles was ending, a move confirmed a month later. Viacom18 also bagged these rights as it aggressively looks for new subs.
Ampere noted Disney+ Hotstar has also decided against bidding for packages of Paramount and NBCUniversal titles, with Viacom18’s Jio Cinema the home of these, too.
The UK-based research house said Disney would need to “review its partnership deals with mobile telcos and encourage direct subscription.” Disney+ Hotstar’s ARPU was $0.59 in Q1 2023, more than ten times lower than the $6.47 of the core Disney+ service around the world.
“With India set to keep its position as the world’s third largest SVoD market after the US and China with an expected growth to 180m subscriptions in 2027, it is important for Disney+ Hotstar to balance its content expenditure and subscription retention and acquisition,” said Orina Zhao, Senior Analyst at Ampere Analysis.
“Jio Cinema is expected to announce more standard subscription plans later this year which will increase direct competition with existing players and change the ecosystem of the market. Disney+ Hotstar still owns 123 of the top 500 most popular titles in India, by Ampere’s estimates, which places it behind Amazon Prime but ahead of Netflix (117 titles) and far ahead of Jio Cinema (38 titles), but now needs to find new sustainable strategies to improve profitability while maintaining its significant subscriber base in India.”
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