A new rumor seemingly indicates that it is likely Disney will unload it’s underperforming Indian streaming assets, including Disney+ HotStar, to Reliance Industries. Reliance also happens to be their largest competitor in that market.
Last summer it was reported that Disney was looking to sell their Indian assets including the HotStar service. According to Reuters Disney was in talks with Sun TV Network and Blackstone. Now it seems that it will be Reliance Industries who may take ownership.
As with Comcast and Hulu, Disney’s valuation of the assets are higher than Reliance’s valuation. Disney believes their assets to be worth about $10 billion why the potential buyer believes it to be closer to $7-8 billion.
Overall it would be easier to sell the assets to one company instead of piecing them among several buyers. But Disney+ HotStar has been losing subscribers and when Disney lost the streaming rights to the Indiana Premier League matche s it caused an exodus of subscribers in the millions.
According to Forbes:
“In the last nine months, OTT platform Disney+ Hotstar has lost a total of 20.9 million paid subscribers. In the June-ended quarter alone, the platform lost 24 percent (12.5 million) paid subscribers—down from 52.9 million to 40.4 million.”
The average monthly revenue per paid subscriber is lower than it is for other markets as well averaging at about .59 per paid subscriber compared to $6.58 in other markets. They even mentioned that the average of $6.58 specifically excluded the HotStar average of only .59.
Disney can unload the lower revenue of HotStar and make some money selling it off. However, that would also cause their total Disney+ subscriber count to drop. At last report it was about 147 million globally, but it had dropped from the previous high of 164 million subscribers at the end of Q4 2022, with losses coming mostly from HotStar. But removing HotStar could cause a huge subscriber drop as it currently has about 40 million subscribers left.
At this point in time neither Disney or Reliance have announced anything officially and Disney may decide to not sell at all.
For now it is simply a rumor.
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