Reliance continues to be in talks with Disney India to merge the American entertainment giant’s local businesses with Viacom18, with the Ambani-led company likely pick up atleast a 50% stake in the merged entity.<\/p>\n
The latest agreement between Disney India, Viacom18 and Bodhi Tree will likely see Disney retain 40% of the merged business, with the other 60% split between the other two entities, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Bodhi Tree is reportedly eyeing up a 7-9% stake.<\/p>\n
For Bodhi Tree – a joint venture between James Murdoch and a former Star India executive, Uday Shankar, formed in 2021 – the merger is a return to familiar ground, with the Murdoch-Shankar duo having worked together to build Star, before its eventual purchase by Disney in 2019. Shankar was CEO of Star India for a decade until 2020.<\/p>\n
Disney has been in talks to merge its business with the Ambani media house since December, with the WSJ reporting that Viacom18 will pay about $1.5 billion in cash in addition to stock in return for its stake in the merged company. The deal is expected to close in February, with terms not yet finalised.<\/p>\n
Ealier this week, Bloomberg reported that Disney\u2019s India assets are valued at around $4.5 billion, less than the $10 billion the US entertainment giant has previously pursued.<\/p>\n
The dip in valuation is partly attributed to a write-off of revenue from the sale of cricket TV rights by Disney to embattled Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd., which is now expected to be unable to pay up.<\/p>\n
Disney’s struggles with streaming in India were exarcebated after Viacom18 outbid the American company to the rights for the Indian Premier League, shelling out $2.6 billion to stream the tournament till 2027.<\/p>\n
In August 2023, Disney’s quarterly earnings showed a 12 million drop in streaming subscribers in the subcontinent, largely attributed to the loss of IPL streaming, which had been a mainstay on Hotstar.<\/p>\n
Hotstar\u2019s subscriber count stood at 37.6 million in the most recent quarter, down from a peak of 61.3 million in October 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reliance continues to be in talks with Disney India to merge the American entertainment giant’s local businesses with Viacom18, with the Ambani-led company likely pick up atleast a 50% stake in the merged entity. The latest agreement between Disney India, Viacom18 and Bodhi Tree will likely see Disney retain 40% of the merged business, with the other 60% split between the other two entities, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Bodhi Tree is reportedly eyeing up a 7-9% stake. For Bodhi Tree – a joint venture between James Murdoch and a former Star India executive, Uday Shankar, formed in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-792169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broadcasting"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}