View: Mouse is in the house
Mukesh Ambani to give Mickey Mouse a new home in India. But the $8.5 bn merger between Disney and Reliance will also take him one step closer to creating the world's largest digital telecom giant.
Apart from obvious media consolidation, expect massive disruption in the advertising landscape and a direct challenge to the likes of Google and Meta. On the face of it, a Unilever may gain with bigger consumer access. But what if the latter faces a future chokehold once Reliance FMCG labels and brands force it to pay more to advertise on this mega digital platform?
By merging apps, cross-selling and piggybacking on 750 million viewers — an estimated 40% viewership share in linear TV, 50%-plus in digital — the combo will have unparalleled access to content and reach, thereby giving it an edge to streamline cost and revenue benefits that no one else could have achieved on their own without looking at a much longer timeframe.
With cheap service offerings, Reliance has spoilt digital natives already with a bounty of content — some its own, and many provided by diverse partners. All that just snowballed, as the House of Disney will ensure exclusive rights to distribute Disney films and productions in India, with a licence to showcase more than 30,000 content from the Disney vault. But in a supra-price-sensitive market, the jury is still out as to whether these hooked consumers will eventually end up paying a tidy sum for a telecom-media-shopping bundle that will have no real rival.
Voice is a low-margin commodity business.
