JioHotstar began rolling out an Asian Games multiview mode on Monday for prepaid subscribers who recharge at ₹299 or above, letting users watch up to four Hangzhou feeds on one mobile screen during live sessions. The feature mirrors the multiview tile the platform tested during IPL 2026, but the rights window is narrower: only events JioHotstar carries under its pan-Asian Games sublicense, not the full Olympic Council of Asia catalog.
Who paid and what viewers get
Disney Star and Reliance Jio merged streaming stacks earlier this year; Asian Games rights for the Indian subcontinent sit with the combined entity through a consortium deal with the broadcast partner in Japan. Prepaid bundles historically excluded premium sports add-ons, which pushed young viewers toward pirated restreams during Commonwealth and Asian events. Monday’s pack ties thirty days of JioHotstar Mobile to multiview for the Games fortnight without forcing a postpaid migration.
Subscribers on ₹299 and ₹399 plans see a “Quad View” entry on the Asian Games hub; ₹199 plans keep single-stream access with a five-minute delay on selected finals, the same tiering Jio used for cricket knockouts. The app caps multiview at 720p on 4G to manage CDN load, with 1080p reserved for Wi-Fi and JioFiber-linked IDs.
Window and device limits
Multiview is live-only—no rewind sync across tiles—and shuts off ten minutes after each session’s official end. Users can pin any combination of hockey, athletics, kabaddi and table tennis feeds listed in the Indian schedule; swimming and esports panels are single-stream only because of timing overlaps in the host feed. One login works on two phones per account, but only one device may run multiview at a time, a restriction streamers said prevents account sharing during peak evening slots.
Industry read
Trade analysts said the move is less about Hangzhou revenue than habit formation: converting prepaid cricket audiences into sports-general subscribers before the 2026–27 domestic football and kabaddi renewals. JioHotstar did not disclose subscriber targets; it said early multiview sessions averaged twenty-two minutes per user in internal beta during the women’s hockey pool opener in Kakamigahara.
What changes for audiences
For fans without cable, the meaningful shift is price-to-access on a single phone plan—especially in tier-two cities where broadband sports packs remain expensive. If CDN performance holds through athletics finals week, expect multiview to return for January’s Under-19 cricket World Cup under the same prepaid ladder. Until then, the test is whether four small tiles on a ₹299 recharge can keep Indian viewers inside a licensed app instead of Telegram highlight chains.
