Disney Explores Strategic Options for India Business

livemint.com:

Disney is exploring strategic options for its Star India business, including a joint venture or a sale, a sign of strain at one of the premier properties it acquired from Fox. The company has talked to at least one bank about ways to help the India business grow, while sharing some of the costs, according to people familiar with the matter. The talks are in the early stages and it is unclear which options, if any, Disney might pursue.

Disney and many of its rivals are in the throes of a costly pivot towards streaming and away from traditional TV businesses. To do so, they spent heavily on deals, content and technology at home and abroad, with mixed success. Disney paid $71.3 billion in 2019 for entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox.

At the time, Star India was considered one of Fox’s crown jewels, and it was an important part of Disney’s plan to build out its fledgling streaming business globally. The deal gave Disney the broadcast and streaming rights for increasingly popular Indian Premier League cricket matches, as well as dozens of TV channels in several languages and a stake in a production company that makes Bollywood movies. Star’s Hotstar mobile-first streaming service, which at the time offered most of its content for free, had 150 million monthly active users and was growing rapidly, largely due to the popular cricket rights.

That business’s fortunes changed last year after Disney lost a bidding war for the rights to continue streaming those cricket matches. Without that programming, the service became less appealing to many users. Hotstar is expected to lose 8 million to 10 million subscribers in its fiscal third quarter, some of the people familiar with the matter said.