The country’s largest media house - a Rs 70,352 crore joint venture between Reliance’s Viacom18 and Walt Disney’s local arm, Star India - is ready to launch.
All regulatory approvals are in place, the companies announced in a joint statement issued from Mumbai and Burbank, California, on Thursday.
The statement said the over Rs 70,000 crore valuation is on a post-money basis and excludes synergies and had a combined revenue of Rs 26,000 crore in fiscal 2024.
The joint venture (JV) operates over 100 channels and produces over 30,000 hours of broadcast entertainment content annually, while digital platforms JioCinema and Hotstar have an aggregate subscription base of over 50 million.
The JV holds a portfolio of sports rights across cricket, football and other sports.
At the closing of the transactions, the joint venture is controlled by RIL and owns 16.34 per cent of the JV with its own arm Viacom18 holding 46.82 per cent, and the rest 36.84 per cent is with Disney.
So far RIL has invested Rs 11,500 crore growth capital into the JV.
Nita Ambani, the wife of RIL chairman Mukesh, will lead the company as the chairperson, while, Star India’s Uday Shankar will be the vice chairperson.
For operational purposes, the JV has appointed three CEOs. While Kevin Vaz heads the entertainment business across the platforms, Kiran Mani takes charge of the combined digital organisation and Sanjog Gupta leads the combined sports organisation.
“Together, they will leverage their unique strengths to cultivate a bold, transformative vision that challenges the status quo and sets new standards in the industry,” the statement said.
The JV houses the media and JioCinema businesses of Viacom18 which gets merged into Star India now and combines some of the popular brands across broadcasting and digital platforms such as the Star Colors channels on the television side and JioCinema and Hotstar on the digital front, providing extensive content across entertainment and sports to viewers.
Apart from the domestic fair trade body Competition Commission, domestic exchanges and NCLT, the merger has been approved by anti-trust authorities in the EU, China, Turkey, South Korea and Ukraine.
RIL chairman Ambani said the JV will transform the domestic media and entertainment industry landscape.
“By joining forces with Reliance, we are able to expand our presence in this important media market and deliver viewers an even more robust portfolio of entertainment, sports content, and digital services, Robert Iger, chief executive of Walt Disney said.
Uday Shankar said the new organisation is committed to delivering an unprecedented level of creativity, disruption and new-age consumer experience under an integrated TV-digital ecosystem under Viacom18 and Star India.
In a separate transaction, RIL has bought out Paramount Global’s entire stake of 13.01 per cent in Viacom18 for Rs 4,286 crore. As a result, Viacom18 is owned 70.49 per cent by RIL now, 13.54 per cent by Network18 Media and 15.97 per cent by Bodhi Tree Systems, on a fully diluted basis.
Bodhi Tree is a strategic investor in consumer technology opportunities in Southeast Asia, with a focus on India. The entity is a platform of James Murdoch's Lupa Systems and Uday Shankar and was established in 2021 to explore and invest in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, is an investor in Bodhi Tree.