2 SEP 2026 — JioHotstar replaced Hotstar in the UK, Canada and Singapore on 2 September, offering more than 160,000 hours in 12 languages. It has 500 million monthly users in India on plans starting at ₹79. Abroad it costs several times that and ships without the cricket that produced the 500 million.
What launched, and at what price
The service went live in three markets and not in the United States. The library runs to more than 160,000 hours across 12 languages including English, Hindi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada and Marathi, with Indian films, originals, reality formats such as Bigg Boss, and live channels under the Star banner.
Pricing is £19.99 quarterly or £69.99 annually in the UK, CA$19.99 quarterly or CA$49.99 annually in Canada, and SG$29.98 quarterly or SG$69.98 annually in Singapore. Indian plans start at ₹79 a month for mobile-only access, which is under a Singapore dollar and a half.
Amit Malhotra is head of international business for JioStar. The company says sports is absent at launch because of existing content deals, and has not ruled out adding it. Reliance merged its media assets with Disney in 2024 into an US$8.5bn joint venture, then combined Hotstar and JioCinema into JioHotstar.
Two products with one name
The Indian business is a volume play. At ₹79 a month the pricing works because the audience is enormous, advertising provides much of the revenue, and cricket delivers the huge concurrent viewership that makes those ads valuable.
The international business is a premium subscription. The Singapore annual plan is about SG$5.83 a month, roughly five times the Indian entry price, and the quarterly plan is higher still. At those prices the economics depend on retention rather than reach.
Without sport, none of that carries over. An IPL final delivers an appointment that a library of 160,000 hours does not, and a catalogue subscription is bought and cancelled on a completely different rhythm from one anchored to a season.
Rights are why, and the explanation is honest
Existing content deals is a real constraint rather than a euphemism. Sports rights are sold territory by territory, and the international rights to Indian cricket have been licensed to other broadcasters in these markets on multi-year terms.
Reliance cannot simply buy the rights back. It has to wait for contracts to expire and then outbid incumbents who know exactly what the diaspora audience is worth. That is a slow and expensive path, and going ahead without sports is the reasonable alternative to waiting.
The international product will therefore be judged on its library for at least one full rights cycle, and whether 160,000 hours of Indian entertainment can sustain a subscription without live sport is not something anyone can currently answer from experience, Reliance included.
The quarterly plan is priced to be refused
Look at the two Singapore tiers together. SG$29.98 for three months is about SG$10 a month; SG$69.98 for twelve is about SG$5.83. The annual plan is roughly 42 per cent cheaper per month.
A gap that wide is a steering mechanism rather than a volume discount. The quarterly price exists to make the annual one look reasonable, and the business wants a twelve-month commitment because a catalogue service without live events has little to hold a subscriber through a quiet quarter.
This pricing reveals the company's expectations. A service confident in its month-to-month retention would price the short plan competitively and let people stay by choice. Pricing the short plan at nearly double suggests the retention risk is well understood inside the company, and that the answer to it for now is a contract term.
Singapore is the interesting one of the three
The UK and Canada have large, long-established South Asian populations and an existing Hotstar footprint. Singapore is a smaller market with a different composition: a Tamil-speaking population that is part of the national fabric rather than a recent diaspora, alongside a substantial Indian expatriate workforce.
Those two groups want different things. The expatriate audience wants the content it watched at home, which is the Hindi-language catalogue and the sport. The local Tamil audience is served by a different part of the library and by a broadcaster landscape that already includes Tamil channels.
Pricing at SG$69.98 a year sits below the major international streamers, so the offer is positioned as an addition to an existing subscription rather than a replacement for one, which is defensible and puts a low ceiling on revenue per household.
What to watch
The number that matters is not the launch subscriber count, which will be flattered by converted Hotstar accounts. It is retention through the first Indian Premier League season the service lacks, when the audience discovers what the international product does not include.
The other thing to watch is a US launch. That is the largest and wealthiest South Asian diaspora, and the market where the rights position is most contested. Its absence from this rollout is more informative than the three markets that were included.
We reported that Grab's regional business is now judged on the profitability of its core segment rather than headline growth. A Reliance business built on 500 million users at under a dollar is entering markets where that arithmetic does not apply, and it will be measured by the standards of the places it has moved into.
