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Disney has signed an $8.5 billion deal to merge its India operations with Reliance Industries, in a move that will reduce the US entertainment group’s financial exposure to what has been a loss-making venture in one of the most populous countries in the world.
Entities controlled by Reliance, the Indian conglomerate run by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, will invest $1.4 billion and take a 63% stake in the new company, while Disney will hold 37%. The new entity is valued at $8.5 billion, the companies said Wednesday.
Disney acquired Star India in 2019 as part of its blockbuster $71 billion acquisition of Fox from Rupert Murdoch. At the time, Disney viewed Star India as one of the most promising businesses in Murdoch’s portfolio.
However, the India business has instead become a financial hurdle, leading Chief Executive Bob Iger to weigh his options in the country as part of a wide-ranging review of Disney’s strategy as it faces pressure from activist investors. Internal debate at Disney took place over whether to leave India completely.
Disney’s sports business in India is expected to lose money for years to come, a difficult prospect for the company as it has also faced losses in its U.S. streaming unit and the long-term decline of its traditional TV business.
Disney suffered a major setback last year when it lost the rights to stream the popular IPL cricket tournament from 2023-27 in a record $6.2 billion auction. Streaming rights are crucial because many Indian cricket fans watch matches on their mobile phones rather than traditional TV.
While Disney retained the television broadcast rights, the streaming rights went to JioCinema, a joint venture between Reliance Industries and Viacom18, run by James Murdoch and former Disney India chief Uday Shankar.
The joint venture between Disney and Reliance underlines the difficulties global media groups face in entering the movie-loving but price-conscious Indian market, where annual subscriber revenue remains low.
The deal follows the collapse of a deal between Sony and India’s Zee Entertainment earlier this year, which would have created a $10 billion media powerhouse to rival Reliance and Disney’s new entity.
Iger acknowledged Reliance’s “deep understanding of the Indian market and consumers” and said Disney and the conglomerate “will create one of the country’s premier media companies.”
Ambani’s wife Nita, who recently stepped down from Reliance’s board of directors and now focuses on the family’s charitable and cultural projects, was named chairperson of the new entity, while Shankar was named vice-chairman.
Shankar, a Viacom18 director who poached several colleagues from Disney, told the Financial Times last year that his goal was to create a digital platform that could rival the reach and viewership of television in India.
Karan Taurani, a Mumbai-based media analyst at Elara Capital, called the deal “very disruptive” for the merged group to control about 40% of the advertising market share in Indian television and streaming – a position “ almost monopolistic”.
Additional reporting by John Reed