Disney Plus comes to India on March 29 via Hotstar ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL) tournament. At The Walt Disney Company Call for First Quarter 2020 Results, Chairman and CEO Bob Iger said that the Disney Plus streaming service will travel to India via Hotstar, thus kicking off Shipping IPL 2020 season. streaming service has amassed 26,5 million subscribers since its launch in November 2019. Hotstar's VIP and Premium subscription plans will be rebranded as Disney Plus Hotstar. Owned by Star India, which in turn is owned by Disney, Hotstar is known for setting streaming world records, the latest of which had a record 25.3 million viewers in the World Cup semi-final. ICC cricket. "We are also pleased to announce that we will be launching Disney+ in India through our Hotstar service on March 29 at the start of the Indian Premier League cricket season. We will be rebranding our existing Hotstar VIP and Premium subscription tiers at Disney plus Hotstar," Iger said. "We see this as a great opportunity to use Hotstar's proven platform to launch the new Disney+ service in one of the fastest growing and most populous economies in the world." he adds.
Hotstar VIP and Premium renamed Disney + Hotstar
As you may have noticed, the Disney Plus streaming service will not have a separate app for India, and instead, the Hotstar app will be revamped to offer original programming, movies, and TV shows from the House of Mouse. Hotstar is one of the largest streaming players in India, with over 300 million subscribers, so Disney needs to integrate with an already established platform for faster adoption. Without going into details, Iger mentioned that Disney was planning to bring two products. to the launch of the streaming service in India. There will be a premium product that includes the entire Disney Plus Hotstar library, while the other will only have the essentials, skipping the original lineup. You may be talking about two subscription plans that will replace Hotstar's VIP and Premium plans. "We think it's a good time, we are taking advantage of Star's presence in the market and the millions of subscribers that they also have, we are taking advantage of the sports link and we are using the "interface and technology that includes billing that already exists to launch a service which we believe in very, very optimal circumstances," he said. According to our previous reports, Hotstar should also double its subscription fees ahead of the IPL 2020 season. It could go up to €30 (~Rs 2,000) from €15 (Rs 999) per Annual subscription making it the most expensive streaming service Hotstar currently offers exclusive sports coverage, specials, movies, TV shows, streaming channels and license titles from 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures , Showtime, HBO, and ABC Studios.Disney Plus, on the other hand, has a huge collection of old and new titles from Walt Disney, Pixar, Lucasfilms, and Marvel Studios, with more original shows slated to debut on the platform in 2020.