The Worldwide entertainment company, Disney suffered a loss of more 8 million viewers. Disney+, Disney’s online streaming platform to a major hit to it viewer count this march as reported. Hotstar is the main reason behind this event. Hotstar is an online streaming platform, mainly based in India and Southern Asia.
Disney+ merger with the Hotstar platform in let the streaming platform get assimilated with the market. The joint platform has been providing Indian users with content for many years now. However, it is not the first time since the platform has lost its subscribers. Hotstar still maintains a subscriber count of nearly 50 million. But, the platform has lost more than total 8 billion of subscriber since October 2022.
The blame for this loss can put on JioCinema, A streaming platform owned Reliance Digital. Most Indian users, used Hotstar to watch the IPL. IPL or Indian Premier League is cricket tournament which garners hundreds of millions of viewers every year. Disney+ Hotstar had the rights to IPL for the last 5 years. This year however, Viacom18 bought the rights. Now with rights to IPL, The Company is letting everyone stream IPL for free on their Platform in order to get more viewers.
Hotstar has also lost rights to any HBO content. On the Other hand, Viacom18 has secured the rights for allowing users to stream HBO and Warner Bros. shows in India.
However, Disney is not actually facing much loses economically. The increase in the subscription prices and reduced marketing costs helped the losses balance out. Last quarter year, Disney lost 1.1 billion USD in operating costs while this quarter, the loss is attributed to be only half of that. Disney’s other theme parks and outlets have also negated any losses further. With theme parks like Disney Land Shanghai, Paris and Hong Kong bringing in $2.2 Billion USD.
