Disney strikes $8.5bn media deal with India's Reliance Industries

Disney announced this week that it’s joining forces with India’s largest private sector company, Reliance Industries, to create a TV and digital streaming platform that will serve up everything from live sports — notably cricket — to Disney films to TV dramas. It’s a joint venture worth $8.5 billion, with an audience of more than 750 million viewers.

There’s this saying in India, said Geetha Ranganathan, a media analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence: “The first thing that Indians care about is cricket, then it’s religion, and then it’s Bollywood.”

At least two of the three — cricket and Bollywood — will be available on this new platform.

Disney has had a presence in India for years, Ranganathan said, but lost cricket streaming rights to Reliance a few years back. That meant losing a bunch of customers, while having to keep subscription fees low.

“You know, it is a very price-sensitive market, so they obviously needed to keep that price point pretty compelling, but they were losing money,” Ranganathan said.

This joint venture is a strategic move from Disney in the world’s most populous country, she said. It’s at a time when more and more people in India are getting access to broadband too.

“They’ve got an expanding middle class,” said John Blevins, a professor at Cornell and a tech strategy consultant. “And when you think of streaming services, they’re getting infrastructure now that’s enabling that.”

Plus, cricket games are long, Blevins added — which means plenty of opportunities for advertising.