Deadline; JioHotstar’s Bosses On The Challenges For Their Newly Combined Disney+ Hotstar & JioCinema Streamer: “At Our Scale, We Can’t Afford To Fail”

Story from Deadline:

When Mumbai commercial powerhouse Reliance Industries and Disney India decided to team up and form India’s largest broadcasting, production and streaming business, it was clear the ambition was as big as the $8.5 billion price tag slapped on the deal.

Reliance, owned by India’s most wealthy man, Mukesh Ambali, had control of channels biz Viacom18 plus ultra-popular low-cost streamer JioCinema and its sports content for a cricket-mad nation, while The Walt Disney Company’s Indian assets included Disney+ Hotstar, the leading streaming service in the country after its 2021 launch, and the Star India networks. When the Sony and Zee Entertainment Enterprises merger collapsed under the weight of regulatory scrutiny, the pathway became even clearer for the new kid on the block to assert dominance.

With a content library totaling more than 30,000 hours and estimated annual revenues of more than $3.1B, the newly named JioStar was set to get going, except for one big question: What would the combined JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar service look like? Today that question is answered.

The streamer will go by the name of JioHotstar, and claims to be able to offer a customer base of potentially 500 million users close to 300,000 hours of entertainment and live sports as part of an “infinite possibilities” strategy.

The content will be offered in 19 languages in total, with its management team having spent months developing a system of targeting thousands of small pockets of customers through the likes of ultra-HD 4K streaming, AI-driven recommendations and personalization tools.

JioHotstar’s leaders say its slate is bigger and broader than any comparable service anywhere in the world. They may have a point: It comprises everything from ICC and IPL cricket; long-running Indian soaps; U.S. studio fare from the likes of Warner Bros Discovery/HBO, NBCUniversal and Paramount; kids content from both India and the likes of Nickelodeon; and edgier premium drama series such as Criminal Justice, Aarya and Dahan. Furthermore, JioStar CEO of Entertainment Kevin Vaz estimates JioHotstar will make around “40 to 50” originals in languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Karnataka, sitting alongside myriad Hindi shows and films.

Live streaming will play a huge role. Following on from last month’s live stream of a Coldplay concert, Music of the Spheres, which was an unexpectedly big success gaining more than 8.3 million streams on Disney+, JioHotstar is placing live events in JioStar Sports CEO Sanjog Gupta’s division — a show of faith that music can drive comparable subs numbers to cricket and soccer. This move will lead to various programs, along with key sports events, that provide “elevated streaming experiences” — think AI-powered insights, real-time stats overlays, multi-angle viewing and a range of “culture” and “special interest” feeds.

On the cricket front, the ultra-popuar Indian Premier League, which is being reunited with Disney+ Hotstar after switching to JioCinema in 2022, will joined by international ICC tournaments, women’s league the WPL, the grassroots Indian Street Premier League (born out the tennis ball cricket played on roads across India), and pathway events from the BCCI, ICC and state associations. Domestic sports such as the Kabbadi Pro league will also sit alongside the English Premier League and the Wimbledon tennis grand slam in a sporting lineup certainly unmatched in India.

JioHotstar also today announced Sparks, a short-form initiative designed to spotlight India’s biggest digital creators through two-minute videos that tie to longer-form productions. New branding for JioHotstar, developed by Venturethree, has also been unveiled.

Of course, all of this comes at a big cost and JioHotstar will need to find its route to profitability pretty quickly. Those with existing JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar accounts will transfer over to the new service, where they will be offered subscription plans starting at ₹149 ($1.71) for three months. “At the core of JioHotstar is a powerful vision — to make premium entertainment truly accessible to all Indians,” Kiran Mani, JioStar CEO of Digital, said today.