Zee plans to slam brakes on buying content, avoid high-budget movies

Zee Entertainment, which also operates the streaming platform Zee5, plans to slash its spending on content for movie and digital divisions to achieve sustained long-term growth, according to a report by Moneycontrol.

Media company’s MD and CEO, Punit Goenka, said the current necessity was to pivot the business to achieve a balanced cost structure for sustained growth.

He said they were scrutinising every aspect of the business to enhance overall performance, and, as a result, anticipated some short-term disruptions in the financial performance of the digital business.

According to the company’s investor presentation, Zee’s content inventory, advances, and deposits decreased by Rs 540 crore in the last financial year (FY24) due to optimised acquisitions and movie releases. The costs dropped to Rs 7,420 crore in FY24 from Rs 7,960 crore in FY23.

“We have been aggressive in buying movies and originals but in a situation like today when we have to be frugal and make sure of buying the right content at the right price. So, we are being very cautious in what we buy and at what price. We may slow down buying a bit but eventually, when profitably improves, we will deploy capital back in ZEE5 content,” Goenka told Moneycontrol.

He also emphasised that the company aimed to focus on frugality and quality content, even in its movie business, avoiding the pursuit of high-cost films.

“Most of our previous successes have not been high-cost content. They have been reasonable or low-cost content. We don’t need to buy expensive content,” he said.

In FY24, Zee5 released 89 shows and movies, including 15 originals.

Company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Rohit Gupta asserted that they would not reduce their focus on content but would become more selective going forward.