Disney streams Cricket World Cup free in India to challenge Mukesh Ambani’s JioCinema

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Disney will offer free mobile phone streaming of the upcoming Cricket World Cup in India as the US entertainment group competes for streaming supremacy with Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s JioCinema.

The World Cup starts this year when England meet New Zealand in Ahmedabad on Thursday and runs until November 19. It will be the first time the competition has been held in India in over a decade and is expected to attract hundreds of millions of viewers.

Disney, which exclusively holds both the World Cup broadcast and digital rights, hopes the contest will give it some momentum in India after last year losing the 2023-2027 online rights to stream the popular Indian Premier League cricket tournament to JioCinema.

Mobile phones are an important viewing platform in India, where most people do not own televisions.

JioCinema, a joint venture with investors including Ambani’s Reliance Industries and James Murdoch, streamed the IPL earlier this year for free, poaching viewers and advertisers from Disney and sparking a price battle.

While Disney retained the IPL TV rights, it has been losing streaming subscribers. Chief executive Bob Iger said in July the company was open to selling TV assets, and multiple reports have indicated this could include offloading its India business. Disney declined to comment.

Disney’s decision to make the World Cup free on mobile highlights the challenges attracting a mass audience in country where purchasing power is far lower than in western markets. The group had in previous seasons experimented with making the IPL and other cricket tournaments free online.

However, this year’s World Cup contest coincides with India’s festive season, a two-month period of back-to-back religious festivals including Diwali, which usually helps drive a surge in consumer spending.

“There’s no other country which is as financially sound as India in terms of supporting cricket,” said Ayaz Memon, an Indian cricket writer.

Between its free mobile streaming and TV broadcasts, Disney is hoping to reach a similar number of viewers to the roughly 800mn people who watched the most recent IPL, said a person familiar with the matter.

India, which last won a World Cup in 2011, is the clear favourite in the tournament. An early exit could be a blow to Disney and the advertisers, precipitating a sharp drop in domestic interest.

That is different from the IPL. “Irrespective of which team gets knocked out, the viewership tends to hold up,” said the person. “If, God forbid, India were to get knocked out in the early stages, that would be a big dent.”

But it will be difficult to surpass the IPL buzz. Since its launch in 2008, the IPL has become one of the world’s most lucrative sports leagues thanks largely to its shorter-format, three-hour matches. The World Cup involves a longer version of the game, with matches lasting a day each.

Media Partners Asia, a consultancy, estimates that advertisers will spend around $300mn on the World Cup, compared to around $480mn at this year’s IPL.

“So much is running on these 75 days of the festive season,” said Mihir Shah, an analyst at Media Partners Asia. “It’s almost like a carnival that will get consumer spending out.”