Mukesh Ambani: Last News

Naman Ramachandran Losing streaming rights to the lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament has been a blessing in disguise for Indian market leader Disney+ Hotstar, an Ampere Analysis study reveals. Disney won broadcasting rights but ceded streaming rights to rival JioCinema, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani. Ampere estimates that this “saved the company a figure just short of twice its entire streaming revenue from the past five years.” Despite recent subscriber declines, Disney+ Hotstar still leads the market and holds a 29% streaming market share, Ampere said. As of the first quarter of 2023, Disney+ Hotstar had some 50 million subscriptions, far higher than other global SVODs in India including Amazon Prime Video (12.4 million) and Netflix (6.2 million). However, that compares with some 61 million subscribers in October 2022.

JioCinema Premium has revealed an annual subscription plan of INR999 ($12.13) for Warner Bros. Discovery content. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) is behind Viacom18 and JioCinema. Warner Bros. Discovery and Viacom18 signed a multi-year agreement recently making JioCinema India’s new streaming home for HBO, Max Original and Warner Bros. content from May. The WBD content had previously been carried on the Disney-owned Star TV platform. But the deal with Star expired at the end of March.  Television series will premiere on JioCinema on the same day as the U.S. The deal includes current and future seasons of HBO’s “House of The Dragon,” “The Last of Us,” “Succession” and “The White Lotus,” and returning seasons of “True Detective: Night Country,” “Euphoria,” “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” and “Perry Mason.”

Naman Ramachandran Indian cinema legend Amitabh Bachchan will headline Ribhu Dasgupta’s courtroom drama thriller “Section 84.” The film is produced by Reliance Entertainment, Film Hangar and Saraswati Entertainment in association with Jio Studios. This film will mark Bachchan and Dasgupta’s third collaboration after the critical success of Sony Entertainment Television India’s 2014 miniseries “Yudh” and 2016 film “Te3n.” Bachchan’s last release was Sooraj Barjatya’s “Uunchai,” one of the few box office hits in a 2022 that was otherwise dull for Bollywood.

Disney CEO Bob Iger has joined with four other prominent businessmen to take a small stake in venture firm Thrive Capital.

Naman Ramachandran 5G is going to roll out across India from Oct. 1 and Reliance Jio, the country’s leading mobile service operator with 413 million subscribers, will be at the forefront of it. The move could have a transformational effect. The 5G rollout in India will happen via Jio Platforms, the digital services arm of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. In August, during the Reliance annual general meeting, Ambani told shareholders that the rollout would be complete by Dec. 2023 and that infrastructure investment would be INR2 trillion ($25 billion). A majority of Indians watch streaming content on mobile devices. Fixed broadband penetration in the country is low and Reliance aims to fix this with Jio AirFiber, which uses 5G to provide fiber-quality connectivity over the air.

Naman Ramachandran The Toronto Intl. Film Festival [TIFF] this year offers up three independent films from that have the potential to be commercial hits and a lecture from an Indian filmmaker whose work is box office gold. Gala presentation, feature debutant Shubham Yogi’s “Kacchey Limbu,” a coming-of-age sibling drama with the game of cricket as a backdrop, has billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Studios backing it. “Tora’s Husband,” a family drama set in small-town eastern India is competing in the festival’s Platform section and is by Toronto regular Rima Das, who has tasted box office success with “Village Rockstars.” Actor and director Nandita Das’ “Zwigato” is about the gig economy in India, focusing on the food delivery industry. It stars Indian television superstar Kapil Sharma and is produced by Applause Entertainment, a prolific content producer for streamers, which is planning to enter the theatrical release space imminently. And, S.S. Rajamouli, known for his “Baahubali” franchise and “RRR,” one of 2022’s biggest Indian box office successes, will deliver a lecture that covers among other things, the notion of art versus commerce.

Naman Ramachandran Disney Star has licenced Indian television broadcasting rights for men’s and under-19 tournaments conducted by the International Cricket Council (ICC) to ZEE Entertainment Enterprises Ltd for four years. Last week, Disney Star had retained both digital and television rights from 2024 through 2027. ZEE was a bidder for those rights, Variety understands. Earlier, Disney Star had ceded digital rights to the lucrative Indian Premier League cricket tournament to a consortium led by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Viacom18 and had retained only television rights. Disney Star will continue to be the exclusive home for streaming of all ICC tournaments in India via streamer Disney+ Hotstar. ICC has in-principle approved this arrangement, Disney Star said.

Naman Ramachandran Disney Star has won Indian TV and digital rights to both men’s and women’s global events conducted by the International Cricket Council (ICC) from 2024 through 2027. While the ICC did not disclose a value to the deal, it said that the “incredibly competitive” process “yielded a significant uplift to the rights fee from the previous cycle continuing the impressive growth and reach of cricket.” The rights to the previous cycle, valued at approximately $2.1 billion, were won by Star, then a Fox network, but those were for eight years and for worldwide rights, rather than India alone. The Indian market has grown exponentially since then. Winning the ICC rights is a coup for Disney Star, who recently ceded digital rights to the lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL) tournament to a Viacom18 group backed by billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani, which paid some $3 billion. Disney Star paid $3.01 billion for broadcast rights.

Naman Ramachandran Sajith Sivanandan is joining Disney as executive VP and head of Disney+ Hotstar India, reporting into Rebecca Campbell, chair of Disney’s International content and operations group and K. Madhavan, president, Disney Star. Sivanandan will join in October from Google, where he is currently MD and business head, Google Pay and Next Billion User Initiatives, Asia Pacific.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorApple is looking for more streaming kicks from sports.The tech giant has struck a ten-year rights pact with Major League Soccer, in a deal that will make Apple TV app the exclusive place to see every single live MLS match beginning in 2023. The new rights deal will tie Apple to soccer until 2032, and is the second recent sports deal it has made in recent months, after unveiling a pact in April to show Friday-night games from Major League Baseball.“For the first time in the history of sports, fans will be able to access everything from a major professional sports league in one place,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, in a statement.

Viacom18, a TV and streaming group backed by billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani, has paid $3 billion to win an online auction for two packages of digital rights to Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket. It now has the leverage to change the Indian broadcasting landscape and to the tip the balance even further in favor of streaming.Variety understands that Viacom18 has agreed to pay $2.63 billion for a five year package of regional digital rights.

Naman Ramachandran Principal photography has wrapped on “The Storyteller,” directed by Ananth Narayan Mahadevan (Busan title “Bittersweet”).The film is based on Indian Oscar winner Satyajit Ray’s short story “Golpo Boliye Tarini Khuro.” In the story about originality versus plagiarism, Ray was raising the question: “What is more important – the story or the storyteller?”A restored version of Ray’s “The Adversary” is playing at the Cannes Classics strand of the Cannes Film Festival.The cast includes Paresh Rawal (Amazon Prime Video film “Sharmaji Namkeen”), Adil Hussain (“Star Trek: Discovery”), Revathi (Netflix anthology “Navarasa”) and Tannishtha Chatterjee (Busan title “Roam Rome Mein”).The film is produced by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Studios (Netflix film “Dasvi”) in association with Purpose Entertainment (“Hotel Mumbai”) and Quest Films (Busan Kim Ji-seok Award winner “The Rapist”). Mahadevan said: “As part of the celebrations around the life and work of the legend Satyajit Ray, we are very happy and honored to share our own humble homage to the master storyteller.

Naman Ramachandran India’s Reliance and Viacom18 have entered a strategic partnership with Bodhi Tree Systems, a platform of James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems and former Disney president Uday Shankar, to form a giant TV and digital streaming company in India.Bodhi Tree is fundraising with a consortium of investors to invest $1.78 billion in Viacom18, to “jointly build India’s leading entertainment platform and pioneer the Indian media landscape’s transformation to a ‘streaming-first’ approach,” the companies said in a statement. Viacom 18 is a joint venture of Network 18, the media group controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, and U.S.

Naman Ramachandran Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who has been absent from movie screens for some four years, is teaming up with hitmaking director Rajkumar Hirani for “Dunki.” The film is a co-production between billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Studios, Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment and Hirani’s Rajkumar Hirani Films. The cast also includes Taapsee Pannu (“Pink,” “Dobaaraa” and “Looop Lapeta”). The “Dunki” news was revealed via a teaser video that gives away no plot details, but promises comedy, emotion and romance.

Naman Ramachandran The India expansion plans for short-form video platform Lomotif are well underway via a partnership with billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Viacom18 media conglomerate.The partnership kicks off with 10-episode science-based reality series “The Inventor Challenge,” which is set for an April debut, with the option of a second season. The series is based on Emmy-winning PBS series “Everyday Edisons,” a format developed by Edison Nation, a company now known as Vinco Ventures.

Naman Ramachandran Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN) has acquired exclusive South Asia media rights for the 2022 Asian Games taking place later this year at Hangzhou, China. SPN will have the rights to broadcast the games across its sports channels in India and the subcontinent including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Maldives, and on streamer SonyLIV through Sept. 2023.