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 8:00AM

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.

Max Knoblauch17h

The Trump administration is reportedly planning a 50% made-in-America requirement for USMCA tariff relief

Qualifying for USMCA-related lower tariffs may soon require more US-made vehicle components, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal.

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to introduce a 50% US content requirement for vehicles covered by the trade pact to receive lower tariffs. The content would be measured by cost, according to the WSJ.

There currently isn’t any US-specific requirement for those lower tariff rates, but in order to receive preferential tariffs, vehicles are must contain at least 75% regional content (components made in North America). Per Reuters reporting, the Trump admin is seeking to raise the regional requirement to 82%.

These reported plans are subject to change as the US negotiates USMCA terms with Mexico over the next few months.

Overall, Tesla will likely have the easiest time qualifying for any stricter requirements. The automaker’s vehicles contained the highest amount of US/Canadian content in 2025, according to American University research. Ford, GM, and Stellantis all scored lower.

Notably: the underlying government data that many domestic content measurements rely on intentionally combines US and Canadian components, so it’s difficult to know exactly how much of any given vehicle is specifically US-made.

Exclusive | Trump Administration Wants Autos Under USMCA to Be at Least 50% Made in America

These reported plans are subject to change as the US negotiates USMCA terms with Mexico over the next few months.

Tom Jones23h

The $640,000 Luce makes the average Ferrari look like a bargain

Put aside the shape; put aside the smoothing out of Ferrari’s iconic sharp edges; put aside, even, the calls from former Chairman and President Luca Cordero di Montezemolo to “take the Prancing Horse off.” On the grounds of price alone, Luce detractors might have a point.

By now, many of us will have read the criticisms of Ferrari’s first fully electric vehicle, as the Luce — which was unveiled to the world earlier this week and promptly saw the company’s shares crash out in New York and Milan — gets subtly shaded by competitors online and not-so-subtly shaded by basically everyone else.

What makes all of this worse for Ferrari is that, even by the luxury car maker’s notoriously high standards, they’ve slapped a pretty hefty price tag on the Luce, and the company’s CEO, Benedetto Vigna, has already been forced to defend the €550,000 ($640,000) price point, saying yesterday that it’s “fair to pay for innovation,” per Reuters.

While Ferrari’s cars have been getting more expensive of late, as recently as 2022, Ferrari’s average revenue per car sold was around $340,000. At nearly twice that price, this new electric model is obviously proving a little much (visually, conceptually, and financially) for many loyal and long-standing fans of the Prancing Horse to stomach.