The much-hyped-about merger of JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar will certainly shake the streaming landscape in India. These are two of the biggest OTT players in India in terms of subscriber base, and the resulting entity may just monopolise the market, insiders say. While there has been no official word on how the two platforms will merge, reports have claimed one common platform called JioHotstar will emerge.
But that may just be slightly tricky now, given that the JioHotstar domain has been grabbed by an opportunistic Delhi techie. ( Also read: Reliance's Jio Cinema may soon merge with Disney+ Hotstar: Here's what the OTT can offer ) The JioHotstar domain name The domain name JioHotstar currently opens to a web page with the banner JioHotstar: Best of Entertainment, Streaming Soon. However, the rather simple web page has no logos or branding.
There is a message from the person who has purchased the page, though, and it is addressed to 'dear executive of Reliance Industries' (the parent company of JioCinema). The message reads: "I am an app developer based in Delhi, currently working on my startup. In early 2023, while scrolling through social media, I came across a news piece stating that Disney+ Hotstar was losing daily active users after losing the IPL streaming license, and Disney is considering selling or merging Hotstar with an Indian competitor.
This led me to hypothesize that, since Sony and Zee were pursuing their own merger, Viacom 18 (owned by Reliance) is the only.