JioHotstar races ahead, now second only to Netflix with 280 mn subscribers

JioHotstar reaches 280 million subscribers since February, driven by IPL streaming, exclusive sports rights and international content, now second only to Netflix globally

JioHotstar, the streaming platform of India’s biggest media conglomerate, JioStar, has reached 280 million subscribers since its launch in February, bringing it closer to Netflix, the US-based subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) OTT platform with over 300 million subscribers.

 

“Within a short period of three and a half months… we have got 280 million paid subscribers,” said Kevin Vaz, chief executive officer (CEO), entertainment, JioStar, in an earnings call in April. “Globally, we are very close to Netflix, which gets this [subscriber base] from across the world.”

 

In comparison, Amazon Prime Video has over 200 million Prime members (some countries have Prime Video services bundled with their Prime membership, while in some regions Prime Video exists as a standalone video service, which is not included under Prime membership). Earlier, in April, Media Partners Asia Insights, through its LinkedIn post, had projected that JioHotstar would reach 300 million subscribers before the IPL final in May, which is now rescheduled to June 3. JioHotstar did not respond to an email query on when it expects to surpass Netflix’s subscriber base. 

 

A major differentiator between Netflix and rivals Prime Video and JioHotstar is the advertisement-supported model (AVOD) adopted by the latter two. Prime Video will introduce limited advertisements from 17 June. At launch, the combined platform of JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar had around 50 million subscribers, which surged to over 200 million in April, largely due to the Indian Premier League (IPL).

 

Since the start of this year, JioHotstar has gained momentum not only due to its wide range of international content from top American studios—such as Warner Bros., Discovery, HBO, NBCUniversal’s Peacock, Disney and Paramount—but also due to ongoing major cricket events like the International Cricket Council (ICC) Champions Trophy, the Women’s Premier League, and the IPL.

 

“JioHotstar has a large broadcasting network and this network has a huge base in the majority of the sports event rights in India. This becomes a huge advantage for it [JioHotstar, particularly in cricket streaming], and compared to this, it is hard for others [other major OTT platforms like Netflix and Prime Video] to achieve that scale in India,” said a media buying executive.

 

In the same earnings call, Vaz highlighted that JioHotstar’s content library of 320,000 hours is six times larger than that of Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. He added that the India–New Zealand ICC Champions Trophy final match achieved a concurrency of 61 million, setting a world record for the number of people watching a sports event simultaneously.

 

“If I have to put it into perspective, as many of us might know of the Super Bowl in the US. Let me tell you, their peak concurrency could be one-fourth of it [compared to the India–New Zealand final match],” Vaz noted.

 

He further said that JioHotstar’s catalogue includes 250 original titles—the highest among its contemporaries. On a monthly basis, the Indian OTT platform has 503 million users, which is considered significant compared to other major platforms in the country.