Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) will reportedly be down to operating just one over-the-top (OTT) platform — JioCinema following the company’s merger with Disney+ Hotstar in India based on a report by The Economic Times. As the company stated earlier content and resources have been becoming one big thing lately it was about time we bring them all together to a single more powerful platform for nice smooth operations.
JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar to Merge Soon
In India, Disney+ Hotstar is part of Star India and one of the country’s most popular streaming services with more than 500 million downloads from Google Play Store. This is in comparison to JioCinema, which has 100 million downloads, a platform managed by Viacom18 (a RIL entity).
Even as the user base of Disney+ Hotstar is expected to be much wider, RIL plans to bring together its content with JioCinema under a single brand by merging both offerings and making it more competitive in nature. The consolidation is designed to shrink costs trim and reduce duplication, thus ridding the platform of duplicate streaming services. The new platform, on the other hand, would be able to compete with OTT players across the globe such as YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video.
This came soon after the RIL’s announcement of a mega deal to combine Star India with Viacom18 earlier this year forming an $8.5 billion media behemoth. Together, the entity will command more than 100 television channels and two OTT platforms (owned by TV18 Digital) but RIL may retain its focus only on JioCinema. The merger is pending approval from regulatory bodies like the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). RIL is also closing some Hindi and regional TV channels to address concerns over market dominance, they added.
According to RIL’s 2023 annual report, JioCinema saw an average monthly streamers at around 225 million in India alone, second only to Disney+ Hotstar which had 333 million active users in the last quarter of 2023. Its paid subscriber base, however, plummeted from its peak of 61 million to roughly only around 35.5 million by June 2024 as it lost streaming rights for high-impact content including the Indian Premier League (IPL) and HBO shows.
Despite these challenges, JioCinema has gained momentum, especially after securing IPL digital rights, which boosted viewership. RIL’s chairman Mukesh Ambani sees this success as proof of JioCinema’s potential to rapidly attract large audiences. If JioCinema integrates Disney+ Hotstar’s content, it would give the platform a collection of more than 125,000 hours of entertainment at its disposal spanning movies to TV shows and popular sports leagues in India complemented by premium Hollywood blockbusters. The new platform would offer top sports rights such as the IPL and content from leading studios like Disney, HBO, NBCUniversal, and Paramount Global.
Earlier, RIL also mopped up all its digital assets under a single umbrella platform to capture a larger pie of the OTT market. Recently, JioCinema was transferred to Viacom18 as part of a court-approved deal that involved a ₹15,145 crore investment from RIL and Bodhi Tree Systems into Viacom18.
FAQs
What will happen to Disney+ Hotstar after the RIL merger?
Disney+ Hotstar’s content will be merged into JioCinema.
Why is RIL consolidating with JioCinema?
To streamline operations and reduce costs.
