The Reliance-Disney joint venture on Friday merged its two streaming platforms — Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema — into one. This comes within three months of the JV (called JioStar) coming into existence. The speed of the action, said experts, points to the rapid consolidation of the domestic media market and will see the combined service (called JioHotstar) taking on OTT majors Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, among others. It will offer both sports and entertainment content at an “affordable price”. Premium content will include films, TV shows and animation from the Disney stable, NBCUniversal Peacock, Warner Bros Discovery HBO, and Paramount on the platform.

“At the core of JioHotstar is a powerful vision—to make premium entertainment truly accessible to all Indians,” Kiran Mani, CEO, digital, JioStar, said. “By integrating AI-driven recommendations and offering streaming in over 19 languages, we are personalising content like never before,” he added.

Last month, Disney+ Hotstar had live-streamed Coldplay’s concert in Ahmedabad. JioStar will also look to bring more live experiences, beyond sports and entertainment, setting itself up for “infinite possibilities”, Sanjog Gupta, chief executive officer, sports, JioStar, said.

Subscription plans will start at `149 for mobile-only access to JioStar for three months. A super plan for `299 for two devices (for three months) is also available. While a premium subscription plan for the same period, but without advertisements and for four devices, will cost `499.

The consolidation will see JioHotstar having over 400 million monthly active users, according to industry experts, making it a formidable digital media player, rivalling Google’s YouTube, which has close to 500 million monthly active users in India, its largest market.

MX Player, which was merged with Amazon Mini TV after its acquisition in September 2024, has a base of over 250 million monthly active users. Amazon Prime Video, which is a subscription-based video on demand (SVOD) service, is estimated to have over 60 million monthly active users on its platform. Netflix is estimated to have monthly active users of around 12-15 million in India, according to industry experts.

Existing JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar subscribers will be able to switch to JioHotstar starting Friday, the company said. The new platform will also host Sparks, which will offer original, short-form content with a single episode lasting between two and 12 minutes.