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Disney+ The overall paid subscriber base of Disney’s flagship streaming service Disney+ decreased as a result of Hotstar’s reduction in paid members.The largest-ever quarterly subscriber decrease since the media and entertainment conglomerate began revealing the service’s paid member base in April 2020, Disney’s video streaming service Disney+ Hotstar lost 3.8 million paying customers for the first quarter ending December 31, 2022.
Disney+ Hotstar’s subscriber base for the quarter was 57.5 million, down from 61.3 million the quarter before by 6%.
Only twice in its history has the streaming service seen a quarterly fall in membership numbers; the first time was in Q4 2021, when the service lost 1.6 million subscribers. Disney has a September-to-October fiscal year.
Christine McCarthy, the chief financial officer of Disney, had earlier issued a warning about this fall in November 2022, noting the lack of the Indian Premier League (IPL) competition.
After losing the streaming rights to the IPL competition for the years 2023–2027 to Viacom18 earlier that year, Walt Disney announced in August 2022 that it was decreasing the subscription target for Disney+ Hotstar. By the conclusion of the fiscal year 2024, they anticipate that Disney+ Hotstar would have up to 80 million users.
