Star India's video streaming service Hotstar has launched in United Kingdom ahead of the Asia Cup cricket tournament starting on Saturday.
With this launch, Hotstar is now available in four markets including India, United States, Canada and now United Kingdom. The launch was first reported by BizAsia.
Hotstar claims that it will offer more than 60,000 hours of television shows, and more than 2,000 Indian movies, along with live sports such as Cricket, Kabaddi, Badminton and Hockey to consumers in the United Kingdom.
However, it also noted that the access to the content is restricted to the country i.e. users who buy a subscription in the UK will be able to watch the content only in UK, unlike rival Netflix which changes its content catalogue based on the country.
At the time of writing this article, the service is available through two different plans - a monthly plan priced at £11.99 and a yearly plan priced at £59.99.
The launch comes as Star India restructures Hotstar into two verticals to support its future growth, ET reported last week.
The streaming platform will now have two business verticals - advertising-led video-on-demand (AVOD) and subscription-led video-on-demand (SVOD)— which will be headed by executive vice-president-level business heads, people familiar with the development had told ET at the time.
The company had also received an infusion of Rs 516 crore from Star US Holdings in July.
For the financial year 2017-18, Hotstar parent Novi Digital had posted a loss of Rs 389 crore on revenues of Rs 571 crore,as compared to Rs 489 crore loss on revenues of Rs 320 crore in FY17.
That said, Novi Digital saw revenues of Rs 569 crore in the June quarter primarily due to advertisement and subscription revenue from the Indian Premier League tournament, for which it has exclusive television and digital rights.
Earlier this month, rival Viacom18 also announced that its video-on-demand platform Voot will be making its International debut by launching in United Kingdom in November 2018.
With this launch, Hotstar is now available in four markets including India, United States, Canada and now United Kingdom. The launch was first reported by BizAsia.
Hotstar claims that it will offer more than 60,000 hours of television shows, and more than 2,000 Indian movies, along with live sports such as Cricket, Kabaddi, Badminton and Hockey to consumers in the United Kingdom.
However, it also noted that the access to the content is restricted to the country i.e. users who buy a subscription in the UK will be able to watch the content only in UK, unlike rival Netflix which changes its content catalogue based on the country.
At the time of writing this article, the service is available through two different plans - a monthly plan priced at £11.99 and a yearly plan priced at £59.99.
The launch comes as Star India restructures Hotstar into two verticals to support its future growth, ET reported last week.
The streaming platform will now have two business verticals - advertising-led video-on-demand (AVOD) and subscription-led video-on-demand (SVOD)— which will be headed by executive vice-president-level business heads, people familiar with the development had told ET at the time.
The company had also received an infusion of Rs 516 crore from Star US Holdings in July.
For the financial year 2017-18, Hotstar parent Novi Digital had posted a loss of Rs 389 crore on revenues of Rs 571 crore,as compared to Rs 489 crore loss on revenues of Rs 320 crore in FY17.
That said, Novi Digital saw revenues of Rs 569 crore in the June quarter primarily due to advertisement and subscription revenue from the Indian Premier League tournament, for which it has exclusive television and digital rights.
Earlier this month, rival Viacom18 also announced that its video-on-demand platform Voot will be making its International debut by launching in United Kingdom in November 2018.
( Originally published on Sep 12, 2018 )
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