Reliance’s Jio has been aggressively recruiting from Disney’s Hotstar and is betting heavily on the IPL to capture a large share of the Indian streaming market.
Mukesh Ambani Geois a telecommunications powerhouse in South Asia that has long strived to attract its customer base with a number of services aimed at boosting subscriber retention. Attracting over 425 million customers and claiming his provider status as India’s top his network (mainly due to its aggressively competitive data pricing), Jio’s series additional services have yet to gain significant traction.
With the much-anticipated Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament starting later today, Ambani sees this as the perfect opportunity to revamp Jio’s service deployment strategy.
Viacom18 – a venture between Ambani’s Reliance and Paramount – has beaten Disney to secure the IPL’s five-year streaming rights for the Indian subcontinent region for a total of $3 billion. Unlike Disney’s Hotstar, where in recent seasons he restricted access to IPL streaming to paying subscribers, Viacom18 is opening the floodgates of his IPL games to everyone on his Jio network.
The strategic investment in cricket streaming by Star India executives Ajit Mohan and Uday Shankar nearly a decade ago made Hotstar a household name. The platform attracted over 100 million digital viewers annually during the two-month-long event, solidifying his Hotstar position at the top of the market in cricket alone.
Star India’s Hotstar is the crown jewel of Fox’s large portfolio in its $71 billion acquisition by Disney, which will see Mickey Mouse extend its offerings into a number of international markets.
But Disney’s decision last year to abandon its digital streaming bid to secure TV rights under the leadership of former CEO Bob Chapek embarrassed many industry insiders. We have decided not to renew our licensing rights for HBO content in India. The move is understandably frustrating for many Hotstar subscribers.
In 2016, when Reliance was gearing up to launch Jio, the company emerged as the first carrier to believe in Hotstar’s vision and pledge to cooperate, sources familiar with the discussion said. . Disney has benefited greatly from Jio’s competitively priced data plans. It has enabled tens of millions of Indian consumers to change their internet consumption habits virtually overnight.
Now, Reliance appears to have shifted gears and focused on its own interests.
Jio is aggressively hiring from Disney’s Hotstar and rebuilding its infrastructure to accommodate its large user base. The company will provide 16 separate feeds for his IPL matches, featuring Ultra HD resolution (a first for Indian cricket) and broadcasting in 12 languages.
Analyst group Media Partners Asia reports that Jio Cinema, where Viacom18 plans to stream the game, will grow from $128 million in digital sales in 2022 to up to $350 million during this year’s IPL season. We estimate that it can drive sales. Pay-TV sales increased from his $442 million last year to his $220 million.
“$550 million. Overall digital and pay TV numbers are slightly flat year-on-year, representing a significant loss to annual IPL royalties of US$1.2 billion for 2023-27. Subscriptions are expected to be very modest this year due to the challenges of pay-TV distribution and the scarcity of digital subscriptions,” the report said.
Reliance has “promised” advertisers that cricket streaming at Jio Cinema will reach 400 million users, Media Partners Asia said. Jio Cinema also promised a concurrent user base of 100 million people, almost four times its current record, the analyst group added.
Nonetheless, this underscores Jio Cinema’s significant leap forward, which currently has less than 30 million monthly active users, according to data from mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower. This is despite the fact that over 400 million Jio subscribers can access Jio Cinema at no additional charge.
Many industry executives are skeptical that so many users will shift to streaming on smartphones, given the option to watch games on satellite TV.
Additionally, whether Jio Cinema can effectively manage the technical demands of the tens of millions of viewers tuned in to the game of cricket remains an open question.
