Disney+ Hotstar paid subscriber base up 42% to 61.3 million

Disney Star India-owned streaming platform Disney+ Hotstar continues to grow in size with its paid subscriber base seeing a 42% increase for the quarter ended 1st October 2022. In its Q4 earnings presentation, Walt Disney declared that Disney+ Hotstar's paid subscriber base has swelled to 61.3 million compared to 43.3 million in the same period last year.

The company also reported that the average monthly revenue per paid subscriber for Disney+ Hotstar decreased from $0.64 to $0.58 due to lower per-subscriber advertising revenue and a higher mix of wholesale subscribers, partially offset by an increase in retail pricing.

Walt Disney ended fiscal 2022 with 235.7 million subscribers across Disney+, Disney+ Hotstar, Hulu, and ESPN+. It added nearly 57 million subscriptions this year over the previous fiscal's base of 179 million.

The media conglomerate's revenue from the Direct-to-Consumer segment for the quarter increased by 8% to $4.9 billion and operating loss increased by $0.8 billion to $1.5 billion. The increase in operating loss was due to a higher loss at Disney+ and a decrease in results at Hulu, partially offset by improved results at ESPN+.

International Channels revenues, which include Disney Star India, have decreased 18% to $1.1 billion and operating income decreased 18% to $0.1 billion, reflecting lower operating income from channels that operated for the entire current and prior-year quarters (ongoing channels), partially offset by a benefit from channel closures.

The company noted that the lower results from ongoing channels were primarily due to a decrease in advertising revenue and, to a lesser extent, higher marketing spend and an unfavorable foreign exchange impact, partially offset by lower sports programming costs. The decrease in advertising revenue was due to lower average viewership, partially offset by higher rates.

The decreases in sports programming costs and average viewership were due to the non-comparability of cricket events reflecting the impact of COVID-19-related timing shifts. The most significant impact was on the timing of Indian Premier League cricket matches, as there were no matches in the current quarter compared to 18 matches in the prior-year quarter.