JioHotstar replaces Hotstar in the UK, Canada and Singapore in first global expansion

JioHotstar, the streaming service controlled by Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, is moving beyond its home market for the first time. According to TechCrunch, the platform will replace Hotstar in the UK, Canada and Singapore beginning September 2, the date on which JioStar says Hotstar will "cease to exist" in those three countries.

What subscribers get

Existing Hotstar users in the three markets will lose access through the old app, but their login credentials will carry over to JioHotstar. The new app is available through the App Store and Google Play Store on mobile devices, and on connected TVs.

At launch, the catalogue holds more than 160,000 hours of entertainment: Indian films, TV originals and reality shows such as Bigg Boss, plus live TV channels under the Star banner, including Star Plus, Colors, Star Vijay, Asianet, Star Jalsha and Star Pravah. JioStar says content is offered in 12 languages, among them English, Hindi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada and Marathi, with dubs and translations also available.

The sports gap

The most conspicuous omission at launch is live sports. The international version will not carry the Indian Premier League, the Women's Premier League or Indian national cricket matches — properties that have been central to the platform's huge audience at home. JioStar told TechCrunch that existing content deals are the reason sports are missing, and it did not rule out adding them later.

That marks a sharp contrast with the Indian service, where JioStar claims more than 500 million monthly active users and sports is a major draw. In India the platform streams top cricket events alongside the English Premier League, tennis tournaments including Wimbledon and the US Open, and domestic leagues in sports such as kabaddi and hockey.

The gap has a practical cost for viewers: prices are similar to what Hotstar charged, but JioHotstar offers only entertainment content at launch. Customers who want sports may have to pay extra for another service.

Pricing in the new markets

In the UK, subscriptions cost £19.99 (about $27) per quarter or £69.99 (about $95) per year. In Canada, the service is priced at CA$19.99 (about $14) quarterly and CA$49.99 (about $36) annually, while in Singapore it costs SG$29.98 (about $24) and SG$69.98 (about $55) respectively.

Those figures stand well above Indian pricing, where subscriptions start at ₹79 (about $0.80) a month for a single mobile device and reach ₹2,199 (about $23) a year for the top-tier plan.

From a mega-merger to a global brand

JioHotstar was created after Reliance merged its media assets with Disney in 2024 to form an $8.5 billion joint venture. As part of that deal, the Hotstar and JioCinema streaming services were combined into a single platform for Indian consumers; at the time, the two services together accounted for 85% of India's streaming audience.

Hotstar has operated internationally for years, including in the UK and Canada, and previously ran a standalone service in the US until shutting it down in 2021. The US is not part of this initial rollout, though JioStar says it plans to expand into additional overseas markets over time.

Data from India's Ministry of External Affairs cited by TechCrunch suggests the three launch markets hold a potential audience of more than 4 million people, with some content also likely to appeal to the broader South Asian diaspora. Amit Malhotra, JioStar's Head of International Business, framed the move as more than exporting an Indian product: South Asian audiences have a deep connection to Indian entertainment across languages and generations, he said, while global viewers increasingly seek stories beyond their own — an underserved audience the company intends to build for.

Why it matters

This is the first test of whether India's dominant streaming platform can travel. JioHotstar commands enormous scale at home, but launching abroad without cricket — the content most tightly bound to the diaspora it is targeting — weakens its strongest hook, at least initially. The rollout also shows how the Reliance-Disney joint venture intends to leverage Hotstar's existing international footprint rather than build from scratch, and the steep price gap between Indian and overseas tiers signals a tiered global strategy aimed first at diaspora viewers willing to pay near-Western subscription rates. Whether sports rights follow, and whether the US eventually returns to the map, will shape how far this expansion goes.