By Alokanada Chakraborty
The Indian Premier League’s 2025 edition has put JioHotstar within striking distance of Netflix’s global subscriber base of 300 million. According to a report by Financial Times, subscriptions to the over the top (OTT) platform born out of the merger of Disney+Hotstar and Jio Cinema barely three months ago have jumped to 280 million this month, up from 200 million reported by the platform in April.
The FT report quotes Sanjog Gupta, JioStar’s chief executive for sports, saying, “It has been the biggest season of IPL till now both in terms of viewership as well as monetisation.” JioStar is eyeing a revenue of Rs 4,500 crore from the event.
With revenues of Rs 26,000 crore (FY24), JioStar is India’s second largest media company after Google. Launched on February 14 this year, the JioHotstar OTT platform started its innings with 50 million paid subscribers. Over the next two months, it added a whopping 150 million subscribers.
That early surge was attributed in large part to the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy hosted by the Pakistan Cricket Board from February 19 to March 9, 2025 that featured 15 matches held across three venues in Pakistan and one in the United Arab Emirates.
Overall, the platform had laid out an aggressive launch plan. It worked with over 70 phone manufacturers and over 40 connected TV (CTV) manufacturers to make the app as widely available as possible as it was being rolled out. Second, it offered an interesting proposition that allowed users to consume content from across its library for a certain number of hours for free before nudging them towards a paid subscription.
Finally, though the content library doubled overnight with the merger, it didn’t hike its pricing and retained the Hotstar pricing. “At a price point of Rs 49 a month, we succeeded in shifting OTT content from a want to a need,” Kiran Mani, CEO, digital, JioStar, had told BrandWagon then.
As things stand, JioHotstar competes with global giants Netflix, Prime Video, and YouTube in the Indian streaming market. Industry estimates peg the India subscriber base of Netflix at 15 million and Prime Video at 25 million. India has the largest YouTube audience, with an estimated 491 million users as of February 2025. Speaking at the inaugural edition of WAVES Summit 2025, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan had said that over 100 million channels in India uploaded content on YouTube in the past year, with more than 15,000 surpassing one million subscribers.
Form here on, the challenge for JioHotstar will be to hold on to the IPL-led subscriber surge, say analysts. It is ready. JioStar and Sony Pictures Networks India on Monday announced a collaboration for India’s tours of England in 2025 and 2026. As part of the sharing arrangement, JioStar will exclusively stream all the matches of India’s tours of England on JioHotstar including Tests, ODIs and T20 Internationals. SPNI will retain the television rights for these events for Sony Entertainment Television.
In an earlier interview, Mani had told FE that while the platform would have nine months of cricket this year, its content library goes beyond cricket. “While we want to position ourselves as the unquestionable hub of cricket and sports, our Hindi general entertainment shows are our bread and butter.” This library is wide enough to draw female viewership. Plus, there is kids’ content, reality shows and international content. No other platform offers content from major Hollywood studios such as Disney, Warner Bros, HBO, Peacock, NBC Universal and Paramount.
The platform is also looking at opening up new content hubs. Live events are one such offering. Religious content is another big content hub that holds a lot of promise, says the platform.