HBO content, including popular shows like House of The Dragon and Succession, will not be available on Disney+ Hotstar from March 31, the streamer has announced. These shows have been streaming on the OTT platform since 2016.
“Starting 31st March, HBO content will be unavailable on Disney+ Hotstar. You can continue enjoying Disney+ Hotstar’s vast library of content spanning over 100,000 hours of TV Shows and Movies in 10 languages and coverage of major global sporting events,” the official Twitter account of Disney+ Hotstar tweeted on March 7.
The development comes close on the heels of Disney CEO Bob Iger’s announcement of cost-cutting in the company. Iger intends to cut USD 5.5 billion — USD 3 billion in non-sports related content and USD 2.5 billion in non-content related costs.
HBO and Star India had struck a deal in 2015 to bring HBO content to its streaming service Hotstar. After Walt Disney Company purchased 20th Century Studios — which owned Star India — it was rebranded Disney+ Hotstar in April 2020.
Disney+ Hotstar witnessed a drop in its subscription base by 6 per cent during the October-December quarter of 2022, after it lost the digital rights to stream the Indian Premier League cricket tournament to Viacom18. It is likely that losing HBO content will also result in more subscribers leaving the streaming platform in the coming days.
It is not clear at the moment where HBO shows will be available to stream in India in the future.
