The joint venture formed after the merger of Reliance and Dinsey has taken a big decision. All cricket and sports events including IPL 2025 will no longer be shown on Jio Cinema. According to Reuters report, the company has decided to shift all sports events to Disney + Hotstar. Jio Cinema has the digital rights of cricket matches played in India including IPL. At the same time, Disney + Hotstar has the rights of all ICC tournaments.
Recently, the business of Mukesh Ambani's company Reliance Industries and Disney India has merged. After this merger, there were speculations that Disney's platform would be closed in India. However, this has not happened. Reliance has a major stake in the joint venture formed after the merger of these two companies.
Merger happened in February
The deal worth $8.5 billion i.e. approximately Rs 71,455 crore between these two companies has been finalized in February 2024. After this merger of Reliance and Disney India, the joint venture has 120 TV channels and two streaming apps Jio Cinema and Disney + Hotstar. According to a Reuters report, three sources monitoring the matter have confirmed that major cricket and sports events including IPL 2025 will be shifted to Disney + Hotstar. However, no official information regarding this has been shared by the company.
JioCinema has the rights to broadcast the IPL as well as the English Premier Soccer and domestic Pro Kabaddi League. At the same time, Hotstar has the broadcasting rights of many sports events apart from ICC events. According to the report, recently Hotstar's India head Sajith Shivanandan has informed his employees to switch live sports streaming from Reliance's app to Hotstar.
Will IPL 2025 stream on Hotstar?
This big decision of Reliance has been taken because of the better backend streaming technology of live content that Hotstar has. Apart from this, Hotstar has better technology to manage targeted ads. According to the report, the target has been set for January 2025 to shift sports content from JioCinema to Disney+ Hotstar. Hotstar is known for glitch free live content streaming without any interruption. Last year, in the final of the One Day Cricket World Cup, Hotstar's live viewership had touched the figure of 59 million i.e. 5.9 crores, which is a record.
According to reports, there is currently no information available regarding whether the entertainment content of these two OTT platforms will also be integrated or not. Also, it is not clear whether any one of these apps will be closed or streaming will continue on both the apps. The merger between these two companies has been approved by CCI in August 2024.
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