Disney+ Hotstar's general entertainment content is underappreciated: Christine McCarthy

While Disney+ Hotstar owes a large part of its success to live cricket, the Indian streaming giants' entertainment content is underappreciated, a top Walt Disney official said while speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference 2022.

"India is a big market. There's a lot of focus on the IPL. Disney+ Hotstar users enjoy the current IPL sports program on the platform. But they also enjoy a lot of other sports programming, whether it's other cricket rights, other international sports. Something that's very underappreciated is the amount of general entertainment and the quality of that entertainment and viewership in the Indian market," The Walt Disney Company SVP and CFO Christine McCarthy told Morgan Stanley analyst Ben Swinburne.

To drive home the point further, McCarthy noted that 9 out of 15 popular web series in the country belong to Disney+ Hotstar. She also noted that Disney+ Hotstar users consume sports and entertainment content in equal measure.

"In 2021, of the 15 top viewed series on direct-to-consumer, nine of those came from Disney+ Hotstar. So, there's content that people are going to view just like here in the United States, a lot of people view sports, sports is something that's a very popular type of content to consume, but they also consume other types of content. And so when you think about the number of hours and the quality of the content that is being produced in the Disney+ Hotstar Originals, that's something we're very proud of. And we think that that will continue to make that business one that consumers will engage in," McCarthy stated.

Queried about Disney+'s ability to achieve its 2024 guidance, McCarthy said that the company is confident of achieving the subscriber as well as profitability targets for the streaming business. Disney+ has set a target of achieving 230-260 million paid subscriptions by 2024.

McCarthy noted that scepticism about the company's ability to meet its 2024 guidance was fuelled by a comment made by Disney CEO Bob Chapek about its Indian subsidiary's ability to retain the Indian Premier League (IPL) media rights.

During the Q1 earnings conference call, Chapek had exuded confidence that Disney+ will achieve its 2024 target for Disney+ even if it doesn't win the upcoming IPL media rights. Disney+ Hotstar contributed almost 39% or 45.9 million to Disney+'s overall subscriber base of 118.1 million in Q1 2022.

"I know some people were sceptical on our last earnings call when we said that, we could still make our guidance and this actually related to something in India regarding the IPL. But we feel good about where we are with that 230 million to 260 million Disney+ subscribers by 2024," she added.

The Disney CFO also said that the company is not only looking at subscriber growth but also profitability. "And we like those two because we think it injects the right kind of, I say tension with a little t, but at the right kind of tension for really managing the business. And we're driving towards that, and we feel really good because of the content that we have; the brands we have, the intellectual property we have to work with. And once again, we're learning more."