New Delhi: Disney+ Hotstar, the video streaming service owned by Walt Disney that owned the broadcast rights to the IPL (Indian Premier League) for the past five years may soon look beyond the marquee sports tournament for traction in India. Bob Chapek, the company’s CEO said while the cricket tournament is an important property and the company will do everything to extend the rights, it hopes to achieve subscriber targets of 230-260 million globally by 2024 even without IPL.
“Sports is a very important strategic offering for us because the fandom and passion (for it) is so deep. If you look at India, we're certainly going to try to extend our rights on the IPL. But we're very confident that even if we were not to go ahead and win that auction, we would still be able to achieve our 230 to 260 (subscriber target)," Chapek said during an earnings call on Thursday.
“While the IPL is an important part of the Disney+ Hotstar content offering, it's really one component of a broader portfolio of entertainment and sports. In addition to the original and library content from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic, our Disney+ Hotstar offering does have a massive collection of local content, and we add over 18,000 hours of original programming every year," he said.
Chapek added, "while certainly it's an important component, the local content that we're developing really will mitigate the impact if we were not to win the auction on IPL. It's not like we see that business evaporating if we don't get it."
To be sure, Chapek’s statement on the IPL comes at a time when the competitive landscape in Indian sports broadcasting is set for major churn. The launch of sports vertical by Reliance Industries-backed Viacom18 and Amazon Prime Video's interest in sports will queer the pitch for IPL media rights.
“IPL is one of the three marquee cricketing rights which has played a pivotal role in building scale for Disney+ Hotstar. Upcoming bids for the rights will be highly competitive; retaining the rights thus remains challenging. If the platform loses IPL, it will have to ramp up its investments in local entertainment originals to keep its churn under check," Mihir Shah, vice-president, Media Partners Asia (MPA) said. MPA is an independent provider of research, advisory and consulting services in the media, telecom, sports and entertainment industry in the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.
Meanwhile Disney+ Hotstar has added 2.6 million paid subscribers over the December quarter but eventually ended up with 45.9 million subscribers, a marginal drop from the 46 million subscribers it was estimated to have at the end of the previous quarter. Disney+ Hotstar is present in India and several Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. The average monthly revenue per paid subscriber for Disney+ Hotstar has increased from $0.98 to $1.03 due to launches in new territories with higher average prices, partially offset by a higher mix of wholesale subscribers, the company said. Overall, Disney+ that has almost touched the 130 million mark worldwide, is aiming at 230-260 million paid subscribers globally by the end of fiscal 2024.
Building on the need to cater to a price-sensitive market like India, Disney+ Hotstar had announced a new range of price plans, including a mobile-only plan for Rs. 499 per year last July. The platform had also made original Disney+ (including Marvel) content available on cheaper plans to expand reach.
Sunil Rayan, president and head, Disney+ Hotstar had said in an earlier interview to Mint that the company isn't worried about low ARPU from markets like India but instead chooses to focus on what the local population can afford.
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