Bollywoodizing Netflix or globalizing Hotstar? The cultural-industrial logics of global streaming platforms in India

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the localization strategies of Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar, positing India as a distinctive cultural-industrial contact zone. The Indian market’s size, scale, and cultural and linguistic diversity make it a remarkable region for an epistemic inquiry into global industrial contact zones created by transnational streaming platforms. I map the relative power of Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar in relation to India’s strong local film and entertainment industry. In doing so, I identify two types of localization strategies: the cosmopolitan local and the indigenized global. These strategies encompass content, aesthetics, audiences, and local industry dynamics. This essay explains the cultural and global mobility of media forms tied to cricket and Bollywood and argues that these forms accord the Indian mediascape a distinctive agency, presenting an antipodal inversion of imperialistic discourses of Western hegemonic media power.

KEYWORDS:

• Media Globalization
• Netflix
• Hotstar Disney+
• cricket
• Bollywood
• industrial contact zones
• localization
• India

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Alisa Perren and Joe Straubhaar for their feedback on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For more on debates about platform imperialism, see Jin, Dal Yong. 2017. ‘Digital Platform as a Double-Edged Sword: How to Interpret Cultural Flows in the Platform Era’. International Journal of Communication 11: 3880–3898; Fitzgerald, Scott. 2019. ‘Over-the-Top Video Services in India: Media Imperialism after Globalization’. Media Industries 89–115.

2. The promotional video for Narcos- Mexico using characters from Sacred Games: https://youtu.be/2-ScsCrc0cA

3. See Hotstar’s extensive slate of current local indigenized programming https://www.hotstar.com/in/tv, and the announcement for future shows https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/disney-hotstar-india-original-series-films-1234988653/.

4. In July 2023, a US T20 Major Cricket league premiered. It can be watched live on Disney-owned ESPN+ in the US. It caters to a small but commercially lucrative diasporic Indian population.

5. In 2023, Disney+ Hotstar lost its Indian Premier League streaming rights to its emergent Indian rival, Jio Cinema, owned by Indian billionaire Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani. Hotstar lost over five million subscribers immediately thereafter. The event demonstrates the centrality of cricket to Hotstar’s strategy and the robust Indian media market that can present strong rivals such as Jio Cinema, which emerged as a challenger in a short time. The development is making the Disney conglomerate review its strategic options in India and revert from its wholesale takeover of Hotstar to a strategic partnership with an Indian company. For more, see https://variety.com/2023/global/asia/disney-india-business-potential-sale-joint-venture-1235667496/

6. The show was a prelude to establishing a T20 cricket league in the US, which has since been established. The players appeared in their first US T20 tournament in July 2023. The league includes a mix of renowned Indian, international, and up-and-coming US players. The matches were broadcast in India on Disney+ Hotstar and ESPN+ in the US.

7. Disney recently contemplated changing the Hotstar localization model by trying to merge their services with Indian content and branding it as Disney predominantly in the US. As a result, the streamer lost 12.5 million subscribers in June 2023 because they could not retain the rights to Indian Premier League Cricket. For more, see https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/disney-continues-to-lose-subscribers-for-third-straight-quarter-ceo-bob-iger-says-more-to-accomplish-11691628437594.html.

8. Netflix maintains a public and diplomatic affairs office in Washington, DC. Their current officer, Clare Gallagher, is a former Biden-Harris National Security Council member. Source: LinkedIn.

9. Netflix, in its current strategy, is trying to create a better representation of regional content as well, but Bollywood still dominates.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Swapnil Rai

Swapnil Rai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research focuses on global media industries, networked cultures, and their intersections with questions of gender, policy, politics, and audiences. She is the author of Networked Bollywood: How Star Power Globalized Hindi Cinema, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.