Disney+ Hotstar believes that the viewership during a cricket match can be 50 million. If this happens, it will be 56 percent more than the viewership of IPL on Mukesh Ambani’s JioCinema platform.Walt Disney has taken the gamble of showing free cricket matches in India. Disney+ Hotstar is streaming Asia Cup 2023 and ODI Cricket World Cup for free on mobile this time. By doing this, the company wants to be profitable again, as well as want to connect with the old users who had left it.
According to Reuters, Disney+ Hotstar had the highest number of users last year but after March 2022, the users left, causing a loss of $41.5 million to the company. Users fell by a quarter between October and July last year, putting pressure on the company to return to profitability.
Disney+ Hotstar felt that perhaps Indians would continue to subscribe to their premium content. But, this did not happen. Indians stopped subscriptions when cricket was not shown. In such a situation, Disney+ Hotstar now has only one option left, which is to stream free cricket live.
Disney+ Hotstar believes that the viewership during a cricket match can be 50 million. If this happens, it will be 56 percent more than the viewership of IPL on Mukesh Ambani’s JioCinema platform.
When Disney bought Indian streaming service Hotstar, it paid $71 billion for some of 21st Century Fox’s global assets in 2019. Also, it bought the streaming rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL). After this, in the year 2020, Disney+ Hotstar was made a paid subscription. The company believed that it would get 100 million users in the coming year.
But this could not happen. Meanwhile, last year Mukesh Ambani kept the IPL rights with him for $2.9 billion. After this, broadcast the cricket match for free on Jio Cinema. This reduced the number of Disney subscribers by 21 million in July.
Under the new strategy, Disney has only one option to form a joint venture or sell the Indian business. Disney has bought cricket rights for the years 2024 and 2027 by paying $3 billion. While TV broadcast rights are with Zee, which was bought for $ 1.5 billion. The company expects that it will get an advertisement of Rs 2 crore from this. But by doing this, it will take a long time for the company to extract profits.
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