MUMBAI: The BCCI’s value pitch for the Indian Premier League’s digital rights just got some serious heft with the declaration by the Walt Disney Company in an earnings call that Disney+ Hotstar had added over 4 million new subscribers in the March quarter, “which benefited from the start of the new IPL season”.
In an earnings call on Thursday, Disney’s management said that its Disney+ Hotstar streaming service had contributed to over half of the close to 8 million new global subscribers added in the March quarter.
“We ended the quarter with nearly 138 million global paid Disney+ subscribers, reflecting close to 8 million net additions for the period. A little over half of those net additions were from Disney+ Hotstar, which benefited from the start of the new IPL season,” Christine McCarthy, senior executive vice-president and chief financial officer, the Walt Disney Company, said during Thursday’s investor call.
Disney+ Hotstar now has over 50 million paid subscribers, accounting for 36.4% of the total paid subscriber base of Disney+, McCarthy said.
McCarthy reiterated that this strategy would continue into the future, even as the company was lining up some 100 shows in India in the months ahead.
“One-third of the $32-billion content spend for fiscal 2022 will be going to sports. Of the balance of the $32 billion, a meaningful amount of it will be dedicated to investments in general entertainment content that we can leverage across all our distribution platforms,” she said, adding, “We have about 500 shows in the pipeline for local content outside of the US. Of this, 140 is in Southeast Asia. In EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), it is 150, and in India, it is 100 shows.”
Speaking during the same earnings call, Bob Chapek, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, said that the company’s ad-supported subscription service would roll out in the US by the end of 2022. It would launch internationally by 2023, expanding the reach of Disney+ to more customers and improving access.
“We ended Q2 with more than 205 million total subscriptions after adding 9.2 million in the quarter. That includes 7.9 million Disney+ subscribers, keeping us on track to reach 230 million to 260 million Disney+ subscribers by fiscal ’24. The growth of the platform since its launch reinforces its unique nature. Quite simply, we believe Disney+ is one of a kind, a service based on exceptional branded content with wide appeal across all four quadrants,” Chapek said.
