2025 IPL - Lucknow Super Giants v Royal Challengers Bengaluru

Jitesh Sharma plays a shot during 2025 IPL match at Ekana Cricket Stadium on May 27, 2025 (Surjeet Yadav/Getty Images)

Cricket has helped power an Indian streaming platform to 280 million subscribers

After launching in February, Disney-Reliance-owned JioHotstar’s subscriber numbers have exploded, rivaling that of Netflix.

Claire Yubin Oh

5/28/25 7:00AM

For years, Netflix has led the streaming world order, churning out global, local, and increasingly live sports content to swell its subscriber base to more than 300 million.

But while Netflix has left many of its Western rivals in the dust, India’s JioHotstar is suddenly lurking in second place, with India’s favorite streaming platform racking up more than 280 million subscribers in recent months, per the Financial Times, thanks in part to its broadcasting rights for the world’s most popular cricket league.

Born out of the $8.5 billion megamerger last year between Disney India’s Hotstar platform and JioCinema, a streamer owned by the Indian media giant Reliance, JioHotstar currently owns both the digital and television rights for the Indian Premier League. Before the merger, IPL matches used to be freely accessible on Reliance’s Jio platforms, but since then cricket fans have had no choice but to subscribe to JioHotstar’s services, driving hundreds of millions of fans to commit to the new platform in the span of some four months.

JiHotStar has 280M subscribers — Sherwood News

Testing the boundaries

Home to ~1.4 billion people — many of whom are cricket fanatics — the world’s most populous country was always going to be fertile ground for growing the audience of a new cricket competition. But since its founding in 2007, the quick-fire Twenty20 format has bowled audiences over, quickly making the IPL the most-watched cricket competition.

With such a huge audience, the money has come flooding in. Investment bank Jeffries estimated after the merger last year that JioStar, which owns the JioHotstar platform, will have a 40% share of the total Indian advertising market in TV and streaming.

But that dominance comes with a cost. Despite its huge customer base, subscriptions aren’t as valuable as in other regions, with some packages starting from just $0.60 a month, the FT reported. That’s not a huge sum to pay back the $6.2 billion that broadcasters’ have spent on the high-stake cricket rights, let alone profit from the massive investment. Retaining cricket fans after the IPL season, which ends on June 3, is an even bigger task.

J. Edward Moreno

2/10/26

Hims built a boundary-pushing health business. Now the legal risks are catching up.

Hims is close to trading as if it never began selling GLP-1s.

Nate Becker2/7/26

Hims to stop offering copy of Wegovy pill following FDA scrutiny

Hims & Hers said it has decided to stop offering its newly launched copycat version of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill, after the telehealth company drew criticism from the Food and Drug Administration.

“Since launching the compounded semaglutide pill on our platform, we’ve had constructive conversations with stakeholders across the industry. As a result, we have decided to stop offering access to this treatment,” Hims wrote on X.

Shares of Hims are down double digits in premarket trading on Monday, while Novo Nordisk ADRs are up more than 6% as of 5:20 a.m. ET.

On Friday afternoon, the FDA said it would take “decisive steps” to restrict GLP-1 compounding. Department of Health and Human Services General Counsel Mike Stuart said on social media Friday he had referred Hims to the Department of Justice “for investigation for potential violations by Hims of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and applicable Title 18 provisions.”

Hims launched the product last week, a seeming copy of a recently released and patented drug, which immediately drew fire from Novo Nordisk and regulators.

Hims & Hers Comms on X

Shares of Hims are down double digits in premarket trading on Monday, while Novo Nordisk ADRs are up more than 6% as of 5:20 a.m. ET.

Hims launched the product last week, a seeming copy of a recently released and patented drug, which immediately drew fire from Novo Nordisk and regulators.

Hims, long flying under regulators’ radar, finally strikes a nerve with its Wegovy pill copy

It’s unclear if the pill Hims is selling works or if the FDA will allow it.

J. Edward Moreno2/6/26

$1.3M

Max Knoblauch2/6/26

There’s still plenty of money to be made in brainrot. The top 1,000 Roblox creators earned an average of $1.3 million in 2025 — up 50% from the year prior — according to CEO Dave Baszucki on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.

Roblox paid out $1.5 billion to creators last year, meaning its top 1,000 creators took home about 87% of the total pool.

Like other creator economy giants, Roblox rewards its biggest creators for their contributions to user engagement. Creator-made titles like “Grow a Garden” and “Steal a Brainrot” substantially boosted playing time over the course of the year. In September, the company increased its developer exchange rate, or the ratio of in-game currency to cash payout, by 8.5%.

Texas Governor Abbott And Google Make Economic Development Announcement In Midlothian

Alphabet could buy some pretty huge businesses with the amount of money it plans to spend this year

AI outlays have gone full nut-nut. Even Google, one of the most capital-efficient businesses of all time in its heyday, is spending like there’s no tomorrow.

Tom Jones2/6/26