21st Century Fox’s valuable position in India

Here’s an interesting data point: 21st Century Fox dominates OTT market share in India through its Hotstar subsidiary, which has 150M MAUs. According to new data from internet service provider Jana, Hotstar accounted for 70% of video streaming app downloads in Q1, compared to 13% for SonyLIV, 11% for Voot (owned by Viacom 18), 5% for Amazon Prime Video, and just 1.4% for Netflix.

Hotstar is part of Star India, a 21CF asset that could generate $1B in EBITDA by 2020. Star India reaches 700M people per month across 60 TV channels, plus has sought-after cricket broadcast rights; it owns 80% of Hotstar (with 150M MAUs). Star India hasn’t gotten much attention in the press coverage of Disney and Comcast’s bids for 21CF but it’s a notable component of the conglomerate and offers substantially more growth than most other divisions of 21CF…it’s the market leader in a massive, rapidly-growing market.

(sources: Variety, WSJ)