Disney owned Hotstar, the Indian video streaming service has set a new global record of streaming a live event to the largest number of viewers. According to the company, around 18.6 million users simultaneously watched the Indian Premier League Final 2019 over the Hotstar website or the app.
Hotstar streamed all the matches of the IPL this season and surpassed the 10 million marks multiple time this year. Around 12.7 million users watched the season opener between the Royal Challengers Bangalore and Chennai Super Kings.
The total number of viewers Hotstar collected in the whole 51-day tournament is still not announced by the company, last year IPL had clocked a 202 million overall viewership.
In 2017, Star India obtained the rights to broadcast and stream the IPL tournament for five years with an eye-opening INR 16347.50 crore ($2.5 billion) and later Disney acquired Star India earlier this year for a value of $71.3 billion.
This big number coming from India is amazing as the world’s fastest growing internet market. The company says that its service has garnered 300 million monthly active users, skyward from 150 million it had reported last year.
Hotstar plays in a different category of streaming as the other streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime which has around 30 million subscribers in India as per the industry estimates.
Hotstar also streams the most anticipated tv series “Game of Thrones” which also keeps a large number of users on the Hotstar website and app, but its also coming to an end with the final episode of the season 8 to be aired next Sunday.
As the IPL comes to an end it’s expected that the company will see the number of users decline but the ICC World Cup 2019 is coming in two weeks so the company has high hopes of keeping users stay with the service.
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