As Reliance Industries’ (RIL) Viacom18 and The Walt Disney’s Star India near their much-anticipated merger, speculation is growing about the future of their streaming platforms. Uncertainty remains whether the apps will combine into a single ecosystem or integrate in a way that creates one unified streaming content platform.
This merger is set to form India’s largest media and entertainment conglomerate, valued at $8.5 billion.
Industry leaders believe that the merged entity may retain only one of the two OTT platforms- either Disney+ Hotstar or JioCinema. They have emphasised the importance of focusing on a single app to enhance consumer experience across all content categories, rather than maintaining two separate streaming platforms.
According to recent reports, all live sporting events in India, including the highly popular Indian Premier League (IPL), will be exclusively streamed on Disney’s Hotstar app following the merger of Disney and Reliance’s businesses.
The decision represents the first significant step toward integrating the businesses and indicates that Reliance, the majority stakeholder in the new venture, has no intention of shutting down the Disney platform.
However, it remains uncertain whether Hotstar will undergo a rebranding. It’s also unclear whether JioCinema will retain its entertainment content or if it will all be consolidated into a single app.
Reliance’s JioCinema holds the streaming rights for one of the most popular content, IPL, the Winter Olympics, and the Indian Super League football. On the other hand, Hotstar holds the streaming rights in India for major sports events, including International Cricket Council (ICC) tournaments, the English Premier League and the domestic Pro Kabaddi League.
Ashish Karnad, Executive Vice President at Hansa Research, emphasised, “I would assume that the merged entity would only retain one of the two platforms – Hotstar or JioCinema. As far as the two platforms are concerned, each of them has content of its own and the merged entity will have content from both platforms (although they might differentiate it within the platform). This would mean the new platform will enjoy patronage of both the original platforms and hence have an increased reach. Of course a lot depends on how Disney and RIL price the same.”
When asked about reports suggesting that live sports, including the IPL, will stream exclusively on Hotstar and how this shift might reposition the platform as the prime destination for cricket fans, Karnad responded, “I don’t see any user impact on this. As far as users are concerned, they are interested in watching cricket at an affordable price, the platform doesn’t matter. The patronage will depend entirely on the pricing.”
But, he believes that cricket, especially IPL, is a great opportunity for the new combined platform to get users on to it and keep them engaged on it even post IPL and beyond cricket by using various communication, content and pricing strategies.
Meanwhile, Uday Sodhi, Senior Partner and Co-founder at Kurate Digital Consulting, said, “If the combined entity decides to stream all sports on Hotstar, it’d probably be the right decision as Hotstar has a better consumer experience. If that’s the decision, it’s possible that the JioCinema app will be transitioned to the Hotstar app. It’s best to retain one app and give a great consumer experience across all content categories.”
Furthermore, he went on to say that also, having one app will help them focus all their investments on building a large ecosystem to compete with players like Amazon and Netflix.
“Overall, It’s very likely that sports will move to a paid/subscription model and pricing will increase over a period of time. Current, price levels on OTT subscriptions are unsustainable in the long run,” he added.
However, a senior media planner expressed concerns about the potential pitfalls of a single app overloaded with diverse content from sports, entertainment, etc.
“Users might not appreciate such an abundance of options on one platform. It might make it difficult for them to navigate and discover relevant content. Therefore, it would be beneficial for the merged entity to consider having two separate OTT platforms only, one for premium content and another offering a freemium service tailored for OTT platforms.
Karnad highlighted that both Hotstar and JioCinema have diverse content so the merged platform will have the strength of a combined content. How it takes on other competitive OTT platforms remains to be seen as it will need to devise smart pricing, positioning strategies and leverage cricket.
“Of course there will be changes to the subscription models and there will be bundling options given to maximise patronage. The new merged entity has past data on consumer behaviour on both platforms, so if they use this smartly, they should be able to arrive at a few most viable/optimal packages based on segments of consumers,” he added.
With the merger at the brink of finalisation, industry sources have also hinted that some top-level exits are expected ahead of the upcoming Reliance-Disney merger.
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