Sony’s New Playbook: Sub-Licensing and the Future of Sports Streaming in India
Bonus: Are Fantasy Sports redefining how India watches live streams?
Hey Streamers 👋,
A warm welcome to the 87th edition of the “Streaming in India” newsletter, your weekly news digest about streaming players, OTT trends, and analyses. If you are not already a subscriber, please sign up and join thousands of others who receive it directly in their inbox every Wednesday.
Agenda
Why Everyone’s Sharing: Sony, JioHotstar & the New Rules of Sports Rights in India
Revenue Pressures Driving New Strategies
Implications for User Access and Experience
Shifts in Competition and Collaboration
Expansion of Fantasy Gaming and Sports Ecosystems
Collaboration + Competition = Co-opetition
And….Action!
We got covered by Inc42, one of India’s premier startup and venture capital focused media and PR powerhouse. We are doing a first close by the end of this summer with a lower min commitment [will be higher post July 15th]!
Why Everyone’s Sharing: Sony, JioHotstar & the New Rules of Sports Rights in India
In the past two years, India’s sports streaming landscape has been reshaped by high-profile rights deals and unprecedented partnerships. A notable trend is the sub-licensing of digital rights by traditional broadcasters to other OTT platforms. For instance, Sony Pictures Networks India (which operates SonyLIV) struck a collaboration with Jiohotstar for India’s upcoming cricket tours of England in 2025 and 2026. Under this deal, Sony kept the television broadcast rights on its Sony Sports channels, but licensed the exclusive digital streaming to “Jiohotstar”. As a result, all matches of India’s England tour (Tests, ODIs, T20s) will stream on JioHotstar digitally while airing on Sony’s TV network. This kind of multi-platform tie-up was virtually unheard of until recently, and it highlights a new strategic approach to big-ticket cricket rights in India.
A similar example is Sony’s handling of Roland Garros (French Open) tennis rights. Sony retained the primary broadcast and streaming rights for the 2025–27 French Open, but sublicensed co-exclusive streaming access to FanCode. In 2025, SonyLIV and Dream Sports-owned FanCode are jointly streaming every match of the French Open, with FanCode carrying all courts and matches live. This collaboration marks FanCode’s “grand entry into tennis,” allowing it to expand its portfolio while SonyLIV benefits from a wider digital audience reach. SonyLIV’s Head of Growth & Monetization noted that partnering with FanCode “amplifies the reach” of the Grand Slam to ensure fans across India can catch every match live with greater ease. In effect, Sony has chosen a shared-rights model for these events – securing the content but sharing the streaming with another platform to maximize viewership.
Importantly, these are India-specific strategies driven by local market dynamics. Even Disney’s Star India network, after winning the ICC cricket global rights in late 2022, quickly sub-licensed the TV broadcast portion to Zee for 4 years. Disney Star had paid roughly $3 billion for those rights, but by licensing out the television broadcasts to Zee (while keeping digital on Disney+ Hotstar), it could recoup costs and avoid heavy losses. As Zee’s CEO Punit Goenka stated, “long-term profitability and value-generation” were the focus of that deal [Economic Times]. All these moves underscore a common theme: rights owners are no longer insisting on exclusivity at all costs. Instead, they are open to partnerships and sub-licensing that share the burden of hefty rights fees while broadening distribution.
Revenue Pressures Driving New Strategies
Behind these collaborations is a stark reality – spiraling sports rights costs and revenue pressures on OTT platforms. India’s appetite for cricket and other sports content has driven rights values to astronomical levels. For example, the BCCI (Indian cricket board) media rights for 2023–2028 were auctioned in 2023 for about ₹5,966 crore ($693 million) (₹67.8 crore per match). Similarly, the IPL 2023–27 rights were split at a record total (~₹48,390 crore ($563 million), with digital alone over ₹20,500 crore) – a clear sign that no single broadcaster can easily profit from such huge investments under traditional models. OTT platforms in India historically relied on low subscription prices and high volume, making it hard to recover billion-dollar bids. Disney+ Hotstar, for instance, peaked at 61.3 million subscribers in Q4 2022 when it had IPL, but lost over a third of its base after losing that marquee content. By late 2024, Hotstar’s paid subs had fallen to 35.9 million (down from 61M), and its average revenue per user (ARPU) dropped below $0.80 per month – extremely low by global standards, due in part to subscriber churn and free promotions. This “value gap” put pressure on parent Disney’s earnings, prompting cost-cutting and smarter rights deals.
SonyLIV faced a similar calculus. Though SonyLIV rapidly grew from just 0.7 million paid users in early 2020 to 33.3 million paid subscribers by May 2023, much of that growth came on the back of expensive content investments (cricket tours, UEFA football, WWE, Grand Slam tennis, and a slate of originals). Sony’s management has touted that it runs perhaps the only profitable digital media operation in India [MINT]. To maintain that, Sony cannot overspend or overreach on every sports property. Sub-licensing becomes a safety valve: by selling some rights or sharing coverage, Sony can offset costs with licensing fees and reduce the risk of subscriber revenues falling short. The India-England cricket deal likely saw JioHotstar pay a significant sum or share ad revenue for the digital rights, immediately easing Sony’s financial burden while ensuring coverage. In an environment where even giants like Disney Star had to offload rights (as with ICC tournaments to Zee) to focus on digital, Sony’s strategy is to partner up rather than outbid rivals to exhaustion.
Another factor is that India’s advertisers are also splitting their spending across platforms [New behemoths such as Amazon Prime Video adding on to the advertising inventory]. Television ad revenues for cricket have plateaued, and digital ad rates, while growing, are still catching up. OTTs alone might struggle to monetize a Test series or a niche sport sufficiently. The joint deals allow each platform to focus on its strength – e.g. Sony monetizing via traditional TV ads and subscriptions, while JioHotstar goes for massive digital reach and ad impressions. This multi-platform monetization aims to enlarge the total revenue pie so that costly rights become sustainable. In short, rising content costs and tightening OTT economics have forced a pragmatic, partnership-driven approach in India.
Implications for User Access and Experience
For consumers, these developments have been largely positive, translating into greater access and choice. Important sports events are now available across multiple platforms, sometimes even for free, whereas previously a single subscription might have been the only way. The India tour of England in 2025 is a case in point: fans will be able to watch matches on Sony’s TV channels or stream digitally on JioHotstar – whichever is more convenient. In fact, Reliance’s Jio has a strategy of making digital streams free-to-view for users (supported by ads and Jio’s broader telecom ecosystem). During IPL 2023, JioCinema’s free streaming brought in ~449 million viewers online, with concurrent viewership peaking at an unprecedented 32 million during the final. This kind of open access was unheard of a few years ago. Now, with Jio involved in the India-England series, it’s expected that those cricket matches will also be widely accessible at no extra cost to millions of Jio’s mobile subscribers – a stark contrast to the past when a Hotstar “VIP” subscription was required for Team India games.
Even when not free, the flexibility of access has improved. The SonyLIV–FanCode tie-up for Roland Garros means tennis fans have options: SonyLIV offers the traditional streaming (likely with its premium subscription), while FanCode provides an alternative with innovative features and micro-pack pricing. FanCode’s platform allows users to buy a cheap “tour pass” just for the French Open (sometimes as low as ₹69 for a specific series) or a monthly all-sports pass around ₹199. This pay-per-tournament model means a casual tennis fan isn’t forced into a long subscription – they can pay for what they actually want to watch. Manish Aggarwal of SonyLIV highlighted that by partnering with FanCode, they can serve fans “with greater ease and flexibility than ever before” in following every match on their own terms [Exchange4Media]. In practice, a viewer could use FanCode to hop between any live match (since FanCode streams from all courts) or watch on-demand replays – features that complement Sony’s coverage.
The reach to different demographics and regions is also enhanced. Free mobile streaming and low-cost passes are helping penetration beyond metro cities. FanCode reports that nearly 70% of its subscribers come from outside Tier-1 metros, indicating uptake in smaller cities and towns [Forbes India]. Likewise, JioHotstar’s mobile-first approach tapped into hundreds of millions of smartphone users, including many first-time streamers in rural areas. By sharing rights, a broadcaster like Sony ensures that content isn’t confined to its relatively smaller base (SonyLIV had ~33M subscribers) but can ride on a platform with far greater user numbers or unique reach. Overall, Indian sports fans now enjoy more access points – whether via a full-fledged OTT subscription, a bite-sized pass on FanCode, a telco app, or just basic cable – reducing the barriers to watching live sports legally. This broader access can help curb piracy too, since fans have legitimate affordable alternatives.
Shifts in Competition and Collaboration
These partnerships also signal a shift in the competitive dynamics among India’s media companies. Traditionally, Sony, JioHotstar, and Zee were fierce competitors that vied to outbid each other for exclusive rights. Now we see an intriguing mix of rivalry and collaboration. The Sony–Jio/Disney arrangement for India cricket essentially brought arch-competitors together in a win-win deal. By some accounts, the digital rights for that England tour could easily have gone to JioHotstar – but instead, they allied. The result was cooperation over competition, at least for this property.
Another axis of change is the entry of specialist/niche platforms like FanCode into big leagues. FanCode is owned by Dream Sports (parent of Dream11) and was initially seen as a niche streamer for smaller cricket leagues and sports that majors ignored. By 2024, however, FanCode has built a 100+ million user base and struck deals with top sports bodies (ICC, NBA, F1, etc.). Its partnership with Sony for Roland Garros shows that larger broadcasters now recognize the value of niche platforms rather than viewing them purely as threats. FanCode can complement Sony by engaging hardcore fans with deeper coverage, while Sony focuses on broad distribution of marquee matches.
That said, competition is still intense for the most coveted rights. In August 2023, Viacom18 beat Disney Star and Sony to grab the BCCI’s India-home matches rights, securing both TV and digital for ₹5,966 crore. This showed Reliance’s willingness to spend big and assert their dominance. However, even Viacom18 has shown flexibility post-acquisition – for instance, it licensed some ICC tournament matches to free-to-air DD Sports, and it simulcasts many events on both JioHotstar (digital) and its Sports18 TV channel. In summary, competition in India’s sports streaming is no longer a zero-sum game; it’s a more complex ecosystem where former competitors might team up for certain projects while fiercely competing for others, all with the aim of balancing costs and viewership.
Expansion of Fantasy Gaming and Sports Ecosystems
A significant side-effect of wider sports streaming distribution is the boost it provides to fantasy sports and related digital gaming ecosystems. India’s fantasy sports leader Dream11 (part of Dream Sports) has a massive user base – over 220 million users as of 2023 [AWS] – which thrives on real-time sports engagement. The more people watching live sports, the more participants for fantasy contests. Thus, when streaming rights are shared and more accessible, fantasy platforms see increased traffic and opportunity. Dream11 has been quick to capitalize on this trend. It heavily sponsors streaming events and it frequently advertises during matches on TV and digital. By being omnipresent across platforms, Dream11 ensures that whether a fan is watching on SonyLIV, JioHotstar, or FanCode, they’re likely to encounter Dream11’s brand – driving them to pick up the app and make their fantasy team.
The partnership between SonyLIV and FanCode for Roland Garros can also be seen through the lens of Dream11’s ecosystem expansion. FanCode is owned by Dream Sports, so every new user or subscriber FanCode gains (say, a tennis fan drawn by the French Open coverage) is one more user within Dream’s network who can potentially be cross-sold a Dream11 contest, or merchandise, or other sports services. Dream11 may not yet offer fantasy tennis at scale, but the multi-sport content FanCode carries (cricket, football, F1, basketball, etc.) feeds into year-round fantasy engagement. It’s notable that FanCode has partnered with popular fantasy-friendly leagues – e.g., it streams NFL games, Caribbean Premier League, ICC associate cricket matches – which often come with fantasy contests on Dream11. By broadening sports coverage through sub-licensed rights, the Dream11/FanCode duo casts a wider net for sports fans. This not only helps acquire users but also keeps existing fantasy users engaged during off-peak periods (for example, when no India cricket matches are on, those users might still tune in to a FanCode-streamed football match or a minor cricket league and continue playing fantasy).
Fantasy gaming’s growth in India has been explosive (Dream11’s user count jumped from 150M to ~220M in one year [businesstoday.in], and a lot of that is attributed to how accessible live sports has become on digital platforms. The Dream11 ecosystem benefits from any increase in sports viewership – whether it’s IPL going free to 400+ million people, or bilateral series being on multiple apps, or niche sports finding an audience. In fact, Dream Sports has been investing in content (FanCode and even sports news via partnerships with Cricbuzz/Willow [sportbusiness.com]) precisely to ensure fans have more reasons to stay engaged, which in turn feeds fantasy participation. We can already see cross-integration: during live streams on FanCode, there are often prompts and banners related to Dream11. The fantasy experience is being interwoven with live viewing, creating a feedback loop – as fans watch more, they play more fantasy; as they play fantasy, they are incentivized to watch more live action to track their players’ performance.
By expanding the reach of live sports through sub-licensing and multi-platform streaming, the industry is effectively enlarging the addressable market for fantasy sports. Dream11’s executives have spoken about aiming for 500 million users in the coming years – a target that would likely require almost every sports fan in India to be on board. Initiatives like free streams on mobile and collaborative rights deals directly contribute to that kind of reach. In summary, the trend of shared streaming rights is symbiotic with fantasy gaming: it democratizes access to sports content, which boosts fan engagement on platforms like Dream11, and in turn the thriving fantasy sector (expected to be worth hundreds of crores) pours sponsorship money back into sports events and media rights. It’s creating an ecosystem where streaming platforms, sports leagues, advertisers, and fantasy gaming companies all benefit from a larger, more engaged fan base.
Collaboration + Competition = Co-opetition
The sports streaming rights landscape in India has evolved rapidly from 2023 to 2025, characterized by collaboration born out of necessity. Cost considerations and revenue pressures have broken down traditional rivalries, leading to innovative sub-licensing agreements – SonyLIV sharing digital rights with JioHotstar and FanCode, Disney Star licensing TV rights to Zee, and more. For Indian consumers, these moves have largely improved access: more games are available on more platforms (often at lower prices or free), ending the era of one-platform exclusivity for many events. The competitive balance is adjusting as well – rather than a single-platform monopoly over content, we see joint ventures and a patchwork of rights that encourage each player to focus on its strengths. Monetization strategies have diversified into a blend of subscriptions, ad-supported streams, and flexible pay-per-view options tailored to the Indian market’s price sensitivity.
Crucially, these developments are expanding the overall sports fan ecosystem. The easier it is to watch a match, the more fans that come into the fold, fueling ancillary sectors like fantasy sports (exemplified by Dream11’s 200+ million user base) and sports e-commerce. India’s sports economy is thus moving toward a more sustainable model: one that prioritizes reach and engagement alongside direct monetization. While challenges remain (high rights fees, piracy concerns, and ensuring quality of service across platforms), the trend of the last two years suggests a maturing market that is finding Indian solutions to Indian problems. By focusing on partnerships, hybrid monetization, and fan-centric offerings, stakeholders are trying to ensure that premium sports remain financially viable for platforms without putting them beyond the reach of fans. In doing so, they are not only weathering current revenue pressures but potentially unlocking new value – a larger audience base, more advertising avenues, and a stronger link between watching sports and playing along in the fantasy realm. The Indian sports streaming landscape in 2025 is, therefore, one of coopetition (collaborative competition) geared toward long-term growth, wider access, and richer fan engagement, all within the uniquely dynamic context of India’s media and sporting culture.
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