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.
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.
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.
