Disney+ Hotstar Suffers Outage Amid India Vs Australia Test Series

Amid the ongoing India vs Australia Test Series, streaming service Disney+ Hotstar has suffered an outage on Friday. Several user complaints related to the app outage have flooded Twitter, as well as on Downdetector website.

As the second test match between India vs Australia is being played today, many cricket fans expressed disappointments on social media.

“We are aware of the technical issue impacting Disney+ Hotstar at the moment and we sincerely apologize for the unpleasant experience. We are working to resolve it quickly and in the meantime, we suggest you to restart the application/browser and try once again,” the OTT service’s Malaysia division tweeted replying to a user complaint.

On opening the app, the users are seeing a black screen with the error message – “Something went wrong!”

The Disney-owned OTT platform has a subscriber base of 57.7 Mn as on December 31, 2022. Disney+ Hotstar lost 3.8 Mn subscribers in the October-December quarter of 2022 in its biggest-ever quarterly loss, months after it lost the digital media rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL).

However, Disney+ Hotstar registered an increase in average revenue per user (ARPU) in the December quarter despite subscriber loss. The average monthly revenue per paid subscriber for Disney+ Hotstar rose to $0.74 (INR 61) in the December quarter from $0.58 in the previous quarter.

Globally, Disney+ earned $3.93 average monthly revenue per paid subscriber. It’s ARPU stood at $5.62 in the quarter excluding Disney+ Hotstar.

Thanks to IPL and other cricket rights, Disney+ Hotstar was an undisputed leader in the Indian OTT market for a long period. However, analysts predicted it would lose out between 15 Mn to 25 Mn subscribers due to the absence of IPL in its portfolio.

It is pertinent to note that Disney reduced the subscriber target for Disney+ Hotstar last year to 80 Mn by the end of FY24 from 100 Mn earlier. According to a Deloitte report, the overall OTT space in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 20% to reach $13 Bn−$15 Bn over the next decade.