Hotstar subscribers up amid Disney-Reliance merger talks

Disney+ Hotstar, the video streaming service owned by the Walt Disney Company in India and a few other Asian markets, reported an increase of 2% sequentially in its paid subscribers to 38.3 million for the October-December period, the first since losing the digital streaming rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL) last year.

The company, which follows an October-September accounting year, reported its quarterly numbers on Thursday.

India was the key contributor to the Hotstar subscriber growth, industry experts said, since markets such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia are very small in termsof viewership.