• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

India merger of Sony, Zee to create TV powerhouse challenging Disney

September 23, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

September 23, 2021

By Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Sankalp Phartiyal

MUMBAI (Reuters) – A merger of India’s Zee and a domestic unit of Japan’s Sony Group Corp will create a television powerhouse to grab more advertising revenue, challenging top rival Walt Disney Co in a key growth market, industry officials said.

The Sony-Zee alliance, with about 75 news, entertainment, sports and movie channels in more than 10 languages, stands to become India’s biggest player, with a market share of 27% outstripping that of Disney’s Star India, at 24%.

“This will give them significant distribution muscle and an ad wallet,” Uday Sodhi, a former Sony Digital head in India, told Reuters. “They will become a formidable force.”

Wednesday’s plan, to be finalised over 90 days of exclusive talks, will see Sony pump growth capital to the tune of $1.6 billion into its domestic unit to boost the prospects of the combined firm, while taking a majority stake in Zee.

The Sony funds will enhance the combined company’s digital platforms and its ability to bid for broadcasting rights in the fast-growing sports landscape, the two firms have said.

“For the first time there’s a viable challenge to Disney (in India),” said one former Disney executive, who sought anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to media about the company.

Disney, whose Star India network has dozens of popular entertainment and sports channels, did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Both firms have operated for years in India, where accountants KPMG estimated the television entertainment industry to be worth $10.5 billion in 2020.

The proposed deal aims to unite their networks, digital assets, production operations and program libraries, the firms have said.

India, with a population of 1.4 billion, promises eyeballs on a scale few nations can offer: 900 million television viewers, most of whom are crazy about cricket and sport, as well as melodramatic romance dramas.

Sport is a critical battleground, the executives said.

The merged combination will have better prospects to lure strategic investors or raise funds to bid for the rights to major events, such as the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament, said the former Disney executive and three others.

Disney’s Star won the rights for India’s international and domestic cricket matches for 2018 to 2023 for $946.75 million, and paid $2.22 billion to bag the worldwide IPL rights for five years until 2022.

Some of those rights come up for bidding next year.

Both Sony and Zee also have online digital streaming platforms that will take on the Disney+ Hotstar service, further ratcheting up competition in a market where Netflix and Amazon also operate.

(Reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Sankalp Phartiyal; Additional reporting by Nupur Anand; Editing by Aditya Kalra and Clarence Fernandez)

Source Link India merger of Sony, Zee to create TV powerhouse challenging Disney

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. China Evergrande bonds fall sharply on default worries, onshore bond temporarily suspended
  2. Two UK tech figures plan to row the Atlantic for charity supporting minority entrepreneurs
  3. Microsoft now more focused on ‘killing Zoom’ than Slack, says Stewart Butterfield
  4. Fed’s Powell says changes needed in rules for officials’ investing

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • “Dig Deep, And Persevere”: Number 16, The World’s Longest-Lived Spider, Died Aged 43
  • IFLScience The Big Questions: What Is Time And How Do We Measure It?
  • Marty Goddard: The History Of The Sexual Assault Kit
  • What’s Really Lurking In The Deep Dark Waters Of Loch Ness?
  • Another Comet 3I/ATLAS Record Got Us Asking: How Do We Know An Object Is Interstellar?
  • Scientists Read The Shells Of Clams That Live For 500 Years, And They Tell A Troubling Story
  • New Blood Test Offers Potential For “Simple, Accurate” ME/CFS Diagnosis, Researchers Claim – Other Experts Aren’t So Sure
  • In 1927, A Physicist Conducted A Mass Psychic Experiment Involving 25,000 People
  • Check Out This “Truly Exceptional” Fossil Of A Two-Headed Reptile That Lived 125 Million Years Ago
  • Longest Woolly Rhino Horn Ever Recovered Just Popped Out Of The Siberian Permafrost
  • Deer Can Learn Commands Like “Come”, But The Most Restless Ones In Class Take Longer To Learn
  • Is This Evidence Of The “Oldest Human Habit”? A New Study Has Different Ideas
  • Winds On Mars Are Faster Than Thought, Analysis Of 1,039 Dust Devils Shows
  • 400,000-Year-Old Fossil Shows Butchering Elephants Helped Early Humans To Supersize Their Tools
  • Ignore The Nonsense: Here Are The Real Images Of Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS
  • This Rare Spider Is Half-Female, Half-Male Split Down The Middle – Oh, And A New Species
  • Comet 3I/ATLAS Caught On Camera From Mars Orbit: “This Was A Challenge”
  • JWST Captures Best Image Yet Of A Supergiant Star Before It Went Supernova
  • Isaac Newton’s “Apocalypse Calculations” Predicted A World-Changing Event In 2060
  • 2024-25 Saw The Most US Kids Dying From Flu Since The Swine Flu Pandemic
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version