Disney plans to bring its on-demand video streaming service to India and some Southeast Asian markets by the second half of 2020. In India, the company plans to bring Disney+’s catalog to Hotstar, a popular video streaming service it owns, in May after the end of next year’s Indian Premier League (IPL) professional Twenty20 cricket tournament.
Hotstar leads the Indian video streaming market. The service had more than 300 million monthly subscribers during the IPL cricket tournament and the International Cricket Council or ICC World Cup earlier this year. More than 25 million users simultaneously streamed one of the matches, setting a new global record.
Ipsita Dasgupta, president of Hotstar’s international operations, said that so far the platform’s international strategy has been to enter markets with a “high density of Indians.” Hotstar offers a large library of local movies and titles syndicated from international cable networks and studios.
