Come IPL 10, Hotstar eyes revenues of Rs. 200 crore
With India's infatuation for cricket, the upcoming IPL edition of the IPL T20 tournament looks promising for Star India's Hotstar as it aims to earn over Rs. 200crore in revenues. This is touted to be much higher than the advertising revenue of Rs. 65crore earned during IPL 9. The company has also signed partnership deals worth Rs. 20crore each with Vivo and Maruti Suzuki.
What is Hotstar?
Hotstar is India's very own Netflix. Launched by Star India, the Hotstar app lets users stream the latest movies, TV shows and live sports across Android and iOS platforms.
Hotstar's scintillating growth story
In just over a month after the mobile application launched, Star India's Hotstar saw a whopping 10 million downloads, pitching it to be one of the top digital media product in India. Reports revealed that the app had outdone other popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Enabling users to stream live cricket matches and drama shows has helped the application gain big.
Hotstar battles bandwidth, connectivity issues
"In India, bandwidth issues are very common. With Hotstar, which has been developed specifically for mobile, we resolved these by making it possible to operate even at as low as 50 Kbps. If the bandwidth decreases, the streaming will not stop."-Star India COO Sanjay Gupta
More partnerships in the offing?
With industry experts citing ad rates increasing by nearly 100% for Hotstar, the digital platform is expecting over 130 million viewers to watch the IPL on its platform. This has prompted other media agencies to engage in partnership talks for the IPL with Hotstar.
