A hit movie and a cricket festival power profits at JioStar

Cricket fever during the Indian Premier League, crowd-puller Dhurandhar: The Revenge and a growing microdrama hub powered June quarter profits and revenue at JioStar, the media and entertainment division of Reliance Industries Ltd.

JioStar, formed by the merger of Reliance’s Viacom18 and The Walt Disney Co.’s Disney Star, holds the media rights to the cricket jamboree, and was the co-producer of the Dhurandhar sequel, a box-office hit. It operates over 100 linear TV channels, the film production arm Jio Studios, and the streaming app JioHotstar.

The company reported a 14.5% year-on-year increase in net profit to ₹665 crore, led by higher subscription and digital advertising revenue.

Revenue from operations touched ₹10,946 crore during the quarter, growing by 14% year-on-year, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (Ebitda) from operations stood at ₹ 933 crore, up 30.7% over the same period, JioStar said in a statement.

JioStar said that linear TV — cable television and direct-to-home broadcasting with fixed programming — remains under transition. However, strong growth in digital led to overall entertainment advertising revenue growing year-on-year. The real money gaming ban and the US-Iran war resulted in weak market sentiment, it noted.

JioHotstar’s monthly active users grew 15% year-on-year to 530 million, while the IPL’s digital reach stood at 700 million. The Women’s T20 World Cup 2026 also recorded a 155% growth in digital viewership over the 2024 season. JioStar streams and telecasts both events both IPL and Women’s IPL.

Moreover, the watch-time share of regional languages during IPL rose 33% on digital, JioStar said. Entertainment watch time on JioHotstar grew by 16% on an annual basis, even as Tadka, its newly launched microcontent hub, crossed 100 million active users within two months.

“This was an important quarter for us to lay the foundations of future growth,” Ishan Chatterjee, CEO, sports, JioStar, said at an earnings presentation. He referred to new initiatives such as the Tadka, integration with OpenAI to facilitate conversational discovery in native languages and the launch of an in-house AI media studio. Terming IPL 2026 the biggest ever in terms of consumption, Chatterjee said the tournament remains the biggest acquisition panel for the entire platform, something that is expected to continue to drive a lot of activation across user bases.

On TV entertainment, JioStar said it maintained top position with viewership share at 34% with a 44% share in the Hindi Speaking Markets (HSM) Pay-TV segment.

JioHotstar, the video-streaming platform created by merging Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema, crossed 300 million paid subscribers. In contrast, according to industry experts, paid subscribers for Amazon Prime Video in India currently stand at 21 million compared to 12-15 million for close rival Netflix.

The combination of JioCinema and Hotstar has created a powerful platform, poised to accelerate the expansion of India’s premium VoD (video-on-demand) market, Mihir Shah, vice-president, Media Partners Asia, an independent research and consulting firm, said in an earlier interview to Mint. But “success will depend on their ability to innovate with diverse content forms, leverage interactive features to deepen viewer engagement, and deliver a consistently high-quality experience across a large user base,” he had pointed out.