The Viacom18 and Star India merger to be announced Nov 13

The merger between Reliance Industries’ (RIL) Viacom18 and Walt Disney’s Star India—the largest in its space valued at $8.5 billion—will conclude on Monday, persons in the know have told FE, bringing to an end an almost a year-long process. The merger, which will include over 100 channels and two streaming platforms, was first announced in February this year after the two sides entered into exclusive talks in December 2023 in London.

An email sent to Viacom18 elicited no response till the time of going to press. Disney Star declined comment when contacted.

The conclusion of the merger, according to sources, will be announced after a board meet, which will be chaired by Nita Ambani. Media veteran and Bodhi Tree Systems co-founder Uday Shankar will be vice-chairman of the merged entity, which will be called Star India. Reliance will own 56% of the merged entity; Disney will have 37% shareholding and Bodhi Tree Systems will have 7% stake each in the combined entity.

Sources say Kevin Vaz and Kiran Mani, currently CEOs for the broadcast and digital clusters, respectively, at Viacom18, will take over as co-CEOs of the merged entity. While Vaz, who was earlier with Disney Star, will lead the broadcast and entertainment business, Mani, who was earlier with Google, will lead the digital and sports business.

While the merger will see a combined workforce of around 8,000 employees, say industry sources, there is likely to be a streamlining of headcount to eliminate duplicate roles and redundancies. Disney Star’s country manager and president K Madhavan and Sajith Sivanandan, head of Disney+ Hotstar, have already stepped down from their positions. More exits are likely in the future.

All eyes will also be on how the merged entity will manoeuvre itself in the domestic media market, where rivals Zee and Sony called off their $10-billion merger deal recently.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) had on August 28 approved the merger of Viacom18, Digital18 and Star India, which was subject to modifications submitted voluntarily by the companies.

This included divesting some seven channels, including regional channels in Bengali, Marathi and Kannada, where market share exceeded the 35-40% threshold mark in terms of market share.

The two players have also agreed to not raise TV as well as digital streaming ad rates to unreasonable levels. They have also agreed not to bundle TV and OTT ad slots for cricketing rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL), the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for the remaining tenure of the existing rights. Financial Express