We have seen the rise and fall of almost all OTT platforms but this one particularly has come shocking. I'm talking about Disney+
So what went wrong with Disney and how Disney+ Hotstar is in a major crisis?
Having reached a record number of 90 million subscribers by the end of 2020 was a feat in itself. Fast forward to 2023, Disney is at a great loss because of the success of JioCinema in India. As of April 1, 2023, Disney+ Hotstar has 52.9 million paid subscribers. Additionally, in Q2, the average monthly revenue per paid subscriber for Disney+ Hotstar decreased by 20 percent, from $0.74 to $0.59 and it’s going to bleed money from next year!
Disney, to save their sinking ship, has on-boarded its old captain back, who is none other than former CEO Bob Iger, to take the charge at the time when their share price is at an 8-year low. The big reason is their loss of digital rights to stream the lucrative IPL to Reliance JIO that was the major blow to Disney as a company. Disney failed to recognise that most of its Indian subscribers were just using their platform because of IPL! If this was not enough, they hit by another crises: the loss of steaming right of HBO content in India – a home for many great showed like Harry Potter, Game of Throne , Last of Us etc., to none other than JIO again. All this cumulative resulted as a nightmare for Disney, who once was the fastest growing OTT platform.
As precautionary measures, they are ready to take the hard step. Disney acquired 21st Century Fox in 2019. Star India, which was owned by Fox also came under Disney and in Asian region Star has a wide 30-40 percent Indian tv coverage – making it a prime source of subscribers to Disney. They played this card pretty brilliantly by merging their Disney app to already existing and popular app Hotstar that boosted their subscribers count in no time!
Now Disney is looking for a way out of this mess and for that they are approaching many Indian OTT brands to buy its Star division of India. Not only that, they are also considering a merger with Apple TV at a global level to manage the sinking ship!
And the way forward, it’s going to become more rough for Disney +Hotstar with IPL rights gone, HBO shows gone and now the Star is also slipping by their hands. It seems like Marvel is only brand Disney ahs got to enchant their Indian userbase.
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