Bob Iger stated Wednesday that Disney “wish to keep” in India and is contemplating its choices on this planet’s most populous nation the place its TV enterprise continues to tug revenue however the crown jewel streamer Hotstar is struggling to comprise the subscriber loss.

Hotstar misplaced 2.8 million subscribers within the quarter ending September, widening its total loss to about 23 million in a yr. Hotstar now has 37.6 million subscribers.

The glimmer of hope for Disney is that within the subsequent quarter the corporate is more likely to report a soar within the subscribers rely – and probably have a brand new India companion.

Hotstar has regained many subscribers and attracted tens of hundreds of thousands of non-paying customers again to the platform as they comply with the continuing ICC Cricket World Cup. The corporate can also be inching nearer to signing a take care of Reliance to promote the India enterprise, in response to Bloomberg.

Disney’s larger enterprise in India is the portfolio of dozens of cable TV channels it owns within the nation. “Our linear enterprise truly does fairly effectively, it’s getting cash,” stated Iger, who returned to Disney as its chief government late final yr, on the earnings name.

“However we all know that different elements of that enterprise are challenged for us and for others. And we’re wanting, I’ll name it expansively,” he added. “We’re contemplating our choices there. We’ve a possibility to strengthen our hand.”

Reliance-backed Viacom18 spending greater than $3 billion on cricket rights for an area, however very talked-about, cricket event has disrupted the Indian on-demand streaming market.

India has emerged as a key marketplace for international know-how and leisure giants up to now decade. However regardless of its capability to draw a big person base for on-line providers, the nation sees a comparatively small fraction of those customers changing to paying clients.

“A number of years in the past, once we requested the Worldwide head of a giant TV Community enterprise concerning the firm’s efficiency in India, the manager let loose a protracted sigh and stated that the Indian enterprise someway finds a technique to break his coronary heart yearly,” MoffettNathanson wrote in a report.

“We’ve additionally discovered this first-hand throughout our time masking the various iterations of Fox/Information Corp (FOXA, OP), which owned Star TV India. Regardless of guarantees of reaching $1 billion in EBITDA by 2020, the division all the time fell woefully brief because of the fixed must re-invest in key cricket rights or cellular platform growth.”