It was in November 2021 that Disney owned Hotstar was added as a channel on its Hulu app. Eight months later, Hulu is yet to provide to its Hotstar customers, the service levels that Hotstar may have in other regions.
In their media releases from 2021, Disney positioned the end of Hotstar as a standalone service for U.S. customers as a win for everyone. READ HERE ONE SUCH MEDIA PRESSER
“The move from Hotstar, a premium brand for South Asian content, to ESPN Plus and Hulu in the U.S. expands upon the rich and diverse catalog of live events and stories delivered across the Disney Bundle and provides a platform for South Asian content to reach broader audiences,” the company said in a statement.
The Disney Bundle in the U.S. will include all the Hotstar content that will be migrated over, plus access to everything currently available on Disney Plus, ESPN Plus and Hulu — a collection of more than 100,000 movie titles, TV episodes, original shows and sporting events. The three-service bundle is regularly priced at $13.99/month; Hotstar in the U.S. has cost $49.99/year.
Cricket matches are Hotstar’s most-viewed content. With the programming migration, beginning Sept. 1, ESPN Plus will be the new U.S. streaming home for live cricket events from the VIVO IPL, the International Cricket Council (ICC) Men’s T20 World Cup, and BCCI home tours for the India national team. In 2022, all 62 matches of the IPL season will stream live on ESPN Plus, beginning in March. That will augment the cricket lineup on ESPN Plus, which includes more than 100 Cricket New Zealand matches over the next six years and 100-plus West Indies Cricket matches over the next five years.
Hulu, meanwhile, will add several thousand Hotstar specials and popular Bollywood/South Asian movies and series on a rolling basis. Series now available to all Hulu subscribers include the Indian adaptation of “The Office,” “Hostages,” “Out of Love” (based on BBC series “Dr. Foster”), “City of Dreams,” “Live Telecast” and “OK Computer.”
8 months later, most of the Hotstar shows on Hulu still do not have all their episodes, neither has Hulu worked on procuring rights to this content that it’s American customers had access to just a few months ago.
Moreover, Hotstar drops daily soap episodes every morning at 6 am India, is supposed to make these available across its streaming services in the rest of the world. Hulu, despite its premium charges sometimes conveniently forgets to upload the content.
Disney+ Hotstar now has over 50 million paid subscribers in India, accounting for 36.4 per cent of the total paid subscriber base of Disney+. Each of them pay $5 per year for their subscription whereas the American Viewers of the same content pay $75 for their annual subscription to Hulu.
Disney added 7.9 million new subscribers to its Disney Plus streaming service during the first three months of 2022.
That brings the total to around 87.6 million worldwide, excluding the 50.1 million people subscribed to Disney Plus Hotstar internationally. In the US and Canada alone, Disney Plus now has 7.1 million more subscribers than it did a year ago, with 44.4 million
Disney also reported that it’s earning more per Disney Plus subscriber than it had been previously, at least in the US.
Disney+ is spending $32 Billion for its content acquisition across the world this year with 500 shows in the pipeline for local content outside of the US including a 100 shows in India alone.
The company’s Earning Report from end of March notes that its revenue growth happened despite the fact that it gave up a billion dollars in revenue to end a customer’s license agreement for film and television content early in order to use the content on its own streaming services. The report doesn’t specify which of Disney’s customers this deal was with, but the company was very clearly willing to take a big hit to get something onto Disney Plus.
And when they have something that big, they are able to play with customer expectations.
If Disney cannot manage the expectations of its existing Hotstar subscribers in the USA, how will it fare in the future with Indian customers ?
