The launch of Disney+ in India has been postponed as the coronavirus continues to spread - 3 minutes read
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The decision was precipitated by the rescheduling of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament, which Disney intended to lean on heavily for the promotion of its new streaming service, per TechCrunch. Disney's plan to leverage the wildly popular IPL tournament hinged on its ownership of Indian streaming service Hotstar, which boasts over 300 million monthly users and has exclusive streaming rights to IPL matches.
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Disney's decision is a testament to the popularity of cricket in India, and its centrality to Disney's plans for its new streaming service. In 2019, Hotstar and the IPL cricket tournament set a global record for most viewers simultaneously watching a live-stream — 18.6 million concurrent viewers tuned in to watch the deciding game.
The IPL series itself totaled over 300 million total viewers for the 2019 season, exceeded 10 million concurrent viewers across several different games. For comparison, NFL games averaged 16.7 million viewers per game in the 2019-2020 season, across both linear TV and streaming services. Disney saw that viewership as a springboard for the launch of Disney+ and coordinated the service's local launch around the tournament as a result.
Disney+ isn't the only streaming service grappling with coronavirus-driven disruptions — others are navigating issues from production delays to streaming quality. Coronavirus-driven production delays are affecting original content production for most SVOD services: Disney's Marvel Studios halted production on its shows for Disney+; Netflix announced it would postpone work on all of its original shows and movies; Amazon Prime suspended production on "Lord of The Rings."
At the same time, some SVOD are actually releasing titles on their services sooner than expected due to coronavirus concerns: Hulu put "Big Time Adolescence" on its site a week ahead of schedule, and Disney will release "Onward" on Disney+ April 3, just a few weeks after it was released in theaters. And while some forthcoming platforms — like HBO Max (May) and Quibi (April) — seem like they're sticking to their launch dates, the future seems murkier for others. Namely, for NBCUniversal, which is planning to launch its new streaming service Peacock in July with the help of cross-promotion from the 2020 Summer Olympics, which its parent NBC owns the rights to.
While the Olympics are still on as of now, it seems within the realm of possibility that they could also be postponed and that NBCU would then choose to push back the launch of Peacock too — much like Disney has done with Disney+ in India.
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Source: Business Insider
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