The Wall Street Journal reported that The Walt Disney Company has agreed to sell 60% of its India business to Viacom18, a joint venture between Reliance Industries and ViacomCBS.
The deal, which is expected to close this month, values the India business at $3.9 billion, or about ₹33,000 crore.
The report said that Reliance and Disney had earlier explored a merger of their India operations, but decided to go for a partial sale instead.
The valuation of the India business has dropped from $10 billion, as reported earlier, partly due to Disney selling its cricket TV rights to Zee.
Disney+ Hotstar, the streaming service of Disney in India, has also lost subscribers over the past year, from 61.3 million in September 2022 to 37.6 million in September 2023.
The decline in subscribers was due to the absence of IPL and HBO content, as well as the competition from Jio Cinema.
Nora Fatehi’s ‘Shake It Off’ Dance On TV Show Sparks Outrage. Click Here
