Sony+Disney might make better sense than Sony+Zee
Sony Pictures Entertainment’s reported bid for Disney’s India business may turn out to be a gamechanger in India’s rapidly changing media and entertainment market. It would also help SPE, the global entertainment arm of Sony Group, kill two birds with one stone – by cobbling together a strong and viable entity in India to take on the challenge from Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Cinema and Network18 while getting out of its increasingly troubled – and long delayed – bid to acquire Subhash Chandra’s Zee Network with a strong alternative play on hand.
It’s an indicator of how quickly things are changing in India’s media and entertainment landscape. Back in December 2021, when Sony first signed on to acquire Zee, it looked like a blockbuster deal that would create a $10 billion behemoth and pole-vault the Japanese electronics and entertainment major into serious contention for leadership in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets.
Cut to the present and the landscape looks remarkably different. For starters, Zee has been losing ground steadily, even as the merger has run into a series of challenges from lenders, forcing Sony Pictures Network, its India arm, to disclose in a regulatory filing last month that the merger, originally scheduled to close in the first half of FY24, may drag on into the months ahead.
The other big change is Disney’s decision to sell its India operations, including both linear and digital streaming assets. So long as Disney+Hotstar – the combined entity created by Disney’s global takeover of 21st Century Fox in 2019 – remained a potential rival in India, it made sense for Sony to bid for Zee despite the vast differences in culture between the professionally managed Sony Group and the proprietor-led Zee.
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