Media giant Disney aims to increase revenue in India by offering free cricket on their streaming platform
Walt Disney, the media conglomerate, aims to increase its streaming revenue in India. It plans to do so by providing free cricket on its streaming services across smartphones. The company hopes this new measure will increase advertising revenue and prevent subscriber loss across the platform.Â
Disney had the highest streaming numbers from India globally in the last year. However, the numbers disclosed suggest that the company suffered a loss of $41.5 million on revenue of $390 million.
According to several reports, Disney will suffer further financial losses from the Indian consumer base. The exit of subscribers is slashing the user base. This problem will continue to persist in the future.
OTT platforms are taking Disney’s struggles as a cautionary tale. It comes from the expectation that India’s increasing middle class are willing to consume any piece of media. However, they disregarded the fact that the consumer base is highly cost-conscious.
Disney acquired Hotstar in 2019. It is an Indian streaming service. It was possible when Hotstar paid $71 billion for acquiring 21st Century Fox global assets. Having bought an Indian streaming service and the rights to the IPL, Disney made cricket a paid service on the platform.
However, this plan soon backfired on the company. Last year, Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani acquired the rights to the IPL. He obtained the rights in a bid at $2.9 billion. Soon, he streamed the games for free. Thus, the subscriber base fell from 61 million in October to 21 million in July.Â
Disney takes new measures.
Disney sources admit that there was an error in the judgement of Indian consumers. They overestimated the subscribers willingness to pay for content. It appears that subscribers signed up for Hotstar but were not interested in paying a premium for other content.
Disney has decided to stream the Asia Cup games from 30th August 2023. It will also stream the World Cup in October-November. It will make the free content available to around 600 million smartphone users.
The company is also seeking a joint venture partner or a sale of their Indian operations.
