Disney+ Hotstar lost IPL cricket — and 20 million subscribers with it

Disney+ Hotstar won its Indian subscribers with cricket: the Indian Premier League digital rights carried the service to 61.3 million subscribers by September 2022. But most of that base was cricket-only, and the economics were thin — Hotstar's average revenue per user was $0.59, against $6.58 for core Disney+.

When the rights came up for auction, Disney refused to match the price. Reliance-backed Viacom18 paid Rs 23,758 crore for the 2023-27 digital cycle and streamed the tournament free on JioCinema. The subscribers left with the cricket: Hotstar fell from 61.3M to 52.9M by March 2023 and to 40.4M by June 2023 — down 12.5 million in the April-June quarter alone, a 24% plunge, and more than 20 million since September 2022.

Cost-cutting made the exit worse. Disney dropped HBO content — 144 titles — from Hotstar on March 31, 2023, trimming costs but removing one of the few reasons paying subscribers had to stay.

The rest of Disney+ masked the India slide: total Disney+ subscribers still rose about 1% in the quarter because growth elsewhere covered the Hotstar losses. Disney executives said the decline was expected — the price of letting cricket go.