India’s JioHotstar takes partnership route for Middle East expansion

Reliance Industries’ JioHotstar is expanding into the Middle East and North Africa through a partnership with Starzplay, one of the region’s larger streaming services. Under the agreement announced Tuesday, JioHotstar will operate as a dedicated section inside Starzplay’s app and website, providing a catalog of Indian films, television shows, originals and reality franchises in multiple languages. This approach differs from JioHotstar’s September launch in the U.K., Canada and Singapore, where it replaced Hotstar and launched as a stand-alone streaming service. The MENA arrangement also offers bundled options: JioHotstar combined with Starzplay’s sports lineup, which includes cricket, is available for AED 49.99 per month, while JioHotstar content is accessible via Starzplay’s Plus monthly plan at AED 34.99. The move follows Reliance’s consolidation of its India streaming operations with Disney into an $8.5 billion joint venture that produced JioHotstar after combining JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar. With one of the world’s largest South Asian diasporas, MENA presents a substantial potential audience for JioHotstar’s Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Bangla and other language programming. New JioHotstar originals will stream in the region at the same time as their India premieres, with audio available in up to 10 languages, and the service is placing special emphasis on Malayalam content to reach the sizable Malayali population. JioHotstar’s India sports rights are not being carried over to the MENA release, mirroring the earlier international rollouts. Financial terms of the Starzplay partnership were not disclosed. Starzplay, which has attracted a notable South Asian audience partly through cricket offerings, counts more than 2.3 million subscribers; evision, the media arm of e&, is a major shareholder in Starzplay and previously expanded distribution for Hotstar Specials in the region.