The US entertainment giant may sell a controlling stake in the Disney Star business – which it values at around $10 billion – as opposed to piecemeal transactions weighed earlier, the people said, asking not to be named because the discussions are private. The Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance views the assets at between $7 billion to $8 billion, some of them added.
The acquisition could be announced as early as next month with some of Reliance’s media units merged into Disney Star, the people said, without providing further details. Under the proposal, Disney will likely continue to hold on to a minority stake in the Indian company after any cash and stock swap transaction is completed, the people said. No final decision has been made on the deal or the valuation, and Disney could still decide to hold onto the assets for a bit longer, the people added.
A representative for Disney in India didn’t respond to a request for comment and a spokesperson for Reliance declined to comment.
The deal talks are illustrative of Ambani‘s disruption of India’s entertainment industry after he scooped up the streaming rights to IPL for $2.7 billion in 2022. The billionaire’s JioCinema platform chose to broadcast the cricket tournament for free earlier this year.
Reliance then scored another win by bagging a multi-year pact to broadcast Warner Bros Discovery’s HBO shows in India, content that was previously with Disney.
Even as Disney Star struggled with sliding subscriber numbers, the media group hasn’t ceded the market and had been making investments. It has been weighing other options for the business, including an outright sale or setting up a joint venture, Bloomberg reported in July. Still, Disney’s India streaming platform managed to draw in a record 43 million viewers on Sunday for the men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 match between India and New Zealand, the company said in a statement. That was higher than the 35 million viewership the highly anticipated India-Pakistan grudge match drew earlier this month. Bloomberg