JioHotstar Replaces Hotstar Abroad Without Cricket or Hollywood

JioHotstar launched in the UK, Canada and Singapore on September 2 without live cricket, replacing the old Hotstar app in all three markets.

The new service carries more than 160,000 hours of Indian films, soaps and reality shows, plus live votes on Bigg Boss. JioStar, the Reliance-Disney joint venture behind the app, is asking diaspora households to pay for that stack while the IPL, the Women’s Premier League and India cricket stay off the service because of existing rights deals.

JioHotstar Ships Without Cricket or a Hollywood Bundle

JioStar told partners the old Hotstar app will “cease to exist” in the three countries from September 2, with logins moving to a new JioHotstar app on phones and connected TVs. Existing Hotstar IDs still work. The catalogue and the product layer are the ones built for India, not a trimmed export of the old overseas Hotstar.

Sports is the hole that will be felt first. In India the company points to more than 500 million active users and a home library of more than 300,000 hours, with cricket sitting beside the English Premier League, Wimbledon, the US Open, kabaddi and hockey. None of that live sport is in the overseas launch pack. JioStar said current content deals are the reason and did not close the door on adding matches later.

Launch briefings also said Disney and HBO Max Hollywood titles stay limited to India, so the foreign apps do not pick up that bundle either. The first wave skips the United States, where Hotstar’s stand-alone service shut in 2021. Amit Malhotra, head of international business at JioStar, is selling the gap as a product choice rather than a rights leftover.

Streaming has spent the last decade competing on the size of its catalogue. We believe the bigger opportunity now is to reimagine how audiences experience entertainment.

Amit Malhotra, Head of International Business, JioStar

He also said South Asian households already live with Indian shows across languages and generations, and that the company wants a wider global audience, not a copy of the India app dropped into new stores. The wager is that votes, voice search and a shorter bill can do the job cricket and Hollywood are not being asked to do.

Five Million Overseas Indians, Priced in Three Currencies

India’s Ministry of External Affairs, in its January 2026 census of overseas Indians, counts 3,247,980 in Canada, 1,282,836 in the UK and 483,199 in Singapore, about 5 million overseas Indians in those markets once the three totals are added. Canada is the commercial prize. It holds more than twice the UK community and nearly seven times Singapore’s, and it also gets the richest extras on the new app.

The United States still holds 6,079,221 overseas Indians, more than the three launch countries combined, and it is not in this rollout. JioStar is converting a footprint Hotstar already had, not opening the largest English-language diaspora market. Worldwide the same census puts overseas Indians at 37,280,845.

THE PRICE CARDS FROM SEPTEMBER 2

Those local prices sit far above India, where a mobile month is listed at ₹79 and the top annual plan at ₹2,199. They still undercut a sports bill in Britain. A NOW Sports month is £34.99, and a day pass is £14.99, which is how many households already buy live IPL on Sky Sports. Sony Pictures Networks has been selling Sony LIV in the UK at £7.99 a month through YouTube, so JioHotstar is walking into a market that already has a cheaper monthly Indian-entertainment rival.

The new quarterly option is the first time the company has offered a three-month commitment in all three countries, beside the annual cards. In the UK, current monthly Hotstar bills can keep running for as long as auto-renew stays on. Android users can now finish sign-up inside the app rather than bouncing out to the web.

What Viewers Get Instead of Live Cricket

Subscribers get Indian television, films and reality, with live voting on Bigg Boss in six languages, Before-TV soaps in Canada and Singapore, and a 24/7 house feed in Canada and the UK. The IPL is not in that bundle. JioStar is treating daily serials and a vote button as the reason to open a new app the night the old one dies.

Canada is the only market that receives almost every extra at once: the 24/7 Bigg Boss feed, Hindi episodes seven days before television, Before-TV on the big Star and Colors soaps, and Anil Kapoor’s new game show. Singapore gets Before-TV and the Kapoor show but not the round-the-clock feed. The UK gets the 24/7 feed and same-night television, and it keeps grandfathered monthly billing, but it does not get the Kapoor show or the early soap window.

WHAT THE NEW APP ADDS

• Live Bigg Boss votes: Viewers in all three countries can cast votes through each edition of the franchise, which is back in six languages.
• A 24/7 house feed: Canada and the UK get a round-the-clock live stream; Canada also sees Bigg Boss Hindi seven days ahead of television.
• Before-TV soaps: Singapore and Canada can watch Anupama, Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai, Seher Hone Ko Hai and Azhagae Azhagu before linear TV; UK viewers get the same shows with the broadcast.
• Anil Kapoor’s game show: India Ka Top 1 Percent is listed for Canada and Singapore, not the UK.
• Star and Colors channels: Star Plus, Colors, Star Vijay, Asianet, Star Jalsha and Star Pravah sit inside the app beside films such as Dhurandhar, 12th Fail and Chhichhore.
• New originals: Ali Baba Aur Chaalis Bhoot, Prince of Mollywood, Part Timers and The Court join older series such as Criminal Justice, Special Ops, Asur and Aarya.

JioStar says the platform will add more than 30,000 hours of new programming a year, with subtitles and dubs in more than 12 Asian languages, among them English, Hindi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada and Marathi. The India product already uses ChatGPT-powered voice discovery through an OpenAI tie-up announced in February, and the overseas pitch leans on that same voice layer, AI picks and in-app commerce. A joke that went around on launch morning, that the foreign apps exist so families can keep up with Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai, is closer to the actual package than a speech about a global Netflix rival.

Hotstar Ceases to Exist on September 2

This is a rebrand with a hard cutoff, not a quiet overlay. JioStar said the Hotstar app stops in the three markets on launch day, and users have to download JioHotstar and sign in with the same credentials so the matching tier moves across. For years Hotstar was the diaspora app in these countries while Disney+ ran as its own service. The Indian apps were fused in February 2025 after Reliance and Disney formed the $8.5 billion JioStar joint venture in 2024, with Reliance as the operating partner.

Linear television in Britain already moved first. On August 13, Jiostar UK Ltd put the Star Plus, Star Gold and Star Bharat names back on channels that had been running as Utsav, a reminder that the company still sells Indian entertainment to the same households on the satellite guide. The streaming relaunch now asks those homes to keep a second, Jio-branded app alive after the Hotstar icon disappears.

HOW THE BRAND GOT TO THIS CUTOVER

1. 2021: Hotstar’s stand-alone United States service shuts, and JioHotstar is not using this wave to reopen that market.
2. 2024: Reliance and Disney form the $8.5 billion JioStar joint venture that now owns the India TV and streaming stack.
3. February 2025: JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar merge in India as JioHotstar.
4. August 13, 2026: Star Plus, Star Gold and Star Bharat names return on UK and Europe linear channels.
5. September 2, 2026: The JioHotstar app replaces Hotstar in the UK, Canada and Singapore, and the old app is withdrawn.

The cutover is clean for anyone who already paid Hotstar. It is less clean for anyone who thought an India plan would follow them the way a Netflix login does, which is the next problem the company is choosing not to solve.

Where the IPL Lives in These Markets

Live cricket in these countries stays on the broadcasters that already bought it. In Britain that means Sky Sports Cricket and NOW, in Canada it means Willow, and JioStar is not using the new app to reopen that fight on day one.

The ICC’s own T20 World Cup 2026 map put every India match on JioHotstar at home, with Sky in the UK and Ireland and Willow in the United States and Canada. IPL windows follow the same split. Sky has been the UK home through 2027. Willow has been the North American home. Singapore’s World Cup path ran through Hub Sports 4, a useful marker that even when JioStar holds Indian rights, the overseas match still sits on someone else’s decoder.

WHO HAS THE MATCHES

• United Kingdom: Sky Sports Cricket, Sky Sports Main Event and NOW carry live cricket, including the IPL, at £34.99 a month or £14.99 for a day.
• Canada: Willow remains the live cricket outlet for ICC events, with Hindi and English feeds, while JioHotstar is selling soaps and votes.
• India: JioHotstar and Star Sports still hold the domestic IPL, WPL and India-match stack that the foreign apps are not getting.

That split already shapes how India tours play in Britain, including nights when a dropped catch in Cardiff did more to decide an ODI than any streaming original. A household that wants both the soap and the match still buys two products. JioStar’s bet is that enough of those households will keep the entertainment bill even when the cricket remote points at Sky or Willow.

Geo-Locked Plans and a Second Household Bill

The new apps are local products with local prices. They do not behave like Netflix or Prime Video, which follow a paid login across borders. On launch morning, a viewer in Singapore who tried to open the new app with an India plan was asked to buy again, which is how geo-licensed streaming usually works and which also tells you what JioStar is actually selling: a second household bill in each market, not a passport for the 500 million-user India service.

That is a harder sell than the press copy admits. The library was already paid for in India, so the extra cost of streaming it abroad is small, and the quarterly cards (£19.99, CAD 19.99, SGD 29.98) are cheap next to Sky Sports. They are not cheap next to Sony LIV’s £7.99 UK month, and they buy no IPL. The company is also asking customers to download a new app on the same day the familiar Hotstar icon dies.

Malhotra’s line about a broader global audience will be tested against a narrower fact set. The first wave is three countries Hotstar already served, the Hollywood brands stay in India, live sport stays with Sky and Willow, and an India login stops at the border. What JioStar put on the table instead is a vote button, a 24/7 house feed, Before-TV in the two markets that will pay most attention to it, and a three-month plan. Existing UK monthly customers can sit on the old price until they switch auto-renew off. Everyone else is paying for soaps and a new icon, and waiting to see whether the cricket ever shows up.