JioHotstar abroad: the catalogue travels, the sport stays
JioHotstar replaces Hotstar in the United Kingdom, Canada and Singapore with 160,000 hours of programming, but without the cricket that draws 500 million users in India. A catalogue copies almost for free; sports rights never do. That asymmetry explains four prices for one service.
The fact
From September 2, JioHotstar replaces Hotstar in the United Kingdom, Canada and Singapore. The streaming service owned by India's Reliance group arrives with more than 160,000 hours of programming in more than twelve languages, but with no live sport at all. In India, the same service averaged 500 million monthly active users in the quarter to March 2026, carried by IPL and national-team cricket.
Why it deserves attention
A library of series copies almost for free: once produced, streaming it to one more subscriber in Toronto or London costs next to nothing. That is near-zero marginal cost, the engine of all streaming. Live sport follows a different rule. Its rights are sold territory by territory, for a fixed period, to different buyers. The cricket JioStar holds in India belongs to someone else in the United Kingdom. The brand can be exported; the thing that built its audience cannot.
The price list shows the consequence. The most expensive annual plan costs about 23 dollars in India, sport included; it rises to 36 dollars in Canada, 55 in Singapore and 95 in the United Kingdom, sport excluded. Price does not track content, it tracks the purchasing power of the target audience: more than five million people of Indian origin across the three countries.
Three parties have something at stake. For those viewers, the subscription buys a library, and sport will require a second service. For JioStar, it is a full-scale test: does entertainment alone retain subscribers once cricket is removed? For Netflix or Disney+, a rival born with 500 million users enters their markets while adding almost no cost.
To understand why a catalogue travels almost for free while a match does not, read the Fundamental: “Digital business models: where the money really comes from.”
You'll learn what near-zero marginal cost changes in the economics of streaming, why a subscription business is judged on churn rather than sign-ups, and how four questions are enough to decode any digital service.
Read the Fundamental →
