After holding talks with Reliance, Walt Disney Co is reportedly in talks with billionaire Gautam Adani and media conglomerate Sun Group founder Kalanithi Maran to sell its television and streaming business in India.
The American broadcast major is considering multiple options for its India business, including selling a part of its operations in the country or a combination of OTT platform Disney+ Hotstar and its sports rights, Bloomberg reported citing sources.
Disney is also said to have gauged the interest of some private equity investors for its India business.
The development comes at a time when Disney+ Hotstar has been shedding subscribers in India after losing the streaming rights for the marquee cricket tournament, the Indian Premier League (IPL), to JioCinema.
After losing the IPL rights, Disney+Hotstar’s subscribers dropped by 4.6 Mn to 52.9 Mn by the end of April.
To cope with the losses and cut costs, Disney CEO Bob Iger said it would not renew the contract with HBO to stream its content on the platform. JioCinema pounced on this opportunity and partnered with Warner Bros. Discovery to exclusively stream the content of HBO, Max Original and Warner Bros.
Amid this, the streaming platform also lost the rights to F1 and BCCI media rights.
Meanwhile, JioCinema, in a bid to increase its share in the Indian OTT market, decided to stream the IPL for free. The decision seemed to have paid dividends for the Reliance-backed OTT platform as it saw as many as 5 Cr new app downloads.
Taking a leaf out of JioCinema’s book, Disney+ Hotstar decided to stream cricket tournaments, the Asia Cup and the World Cup, for free for mobile users.
While the ongoing ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup seemed like the last weapon in Disney’s arsenal in the ongoing OTT war in India, the company now seems to have made up its mind to sell the complete or a part of its India business, including Disney+ Hostar.
Recently, the company also spoke with the executives of Reliance to sell off its entire India operations.
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