Walt Disney hopes to turn around the fortunes of its streaming business in India by providing free cricket on smartphones.
The company is hoping that this move will increase advertising revenue and lessen the effects of a customer exodus.
For the year ending in March 2022, the India streaming business, which by number of subscribers were Disney’s largest worldwide the previous year, reported a loss of $41.5 million on sales of $390 million.
The Burbank-based entertainment giant’s financial situation in the nation is only anticipated to get worse as subscriber exits quicken and cut the user number by a third between October of last year and July.
Disney’s struggles serve as a warning lesson for the Indian market, where consumers’ extreme cost-consciousness frequently frustrates hopes of a growing middle class.
When the corporation paid $71 billion for some of 21st Century Fox’s global assets in 2019, it also acquired the Indian streaming provider Hotstar. With the Indian Premier League, the wealthiest cricket league in the world, streaming rights secured, Disney turned cricket on Hotstar into a subscription service in 2020 and said it would attract up to 100 million subscribers within a few years.
