The red hot topic surrounding the big merger between Viacom 18 and Sony pictures network has reached to an anticlimax. The major deal which was supposed to happen has been reportedly called off. This was being done to tackle the already merged Disney-Star which holds a big chunk of Indian Television as well as OTT market.
According to sources, Reliance has decided to retain a majority of stake and control of the overall management.
The talk about the merger began in the month of July 2020, and till September everything was going ok. Let us tell you that Viacom 18 itself is a merger between Viacom and Reliance owned Network 18 channels. The ratio of rights on Viacom 18 is 51:49 JV between Reliance and Viacom.
Now, according to reports the merger between them would have given Sony a 74% stakes whereas Viacom 18 would gain around 26% stakes. But now due to some issues the merger which was supposed to compete with Disney-Star is probably not happening.
Another reports suggest that many other content and production houses are in talks for combining with Jio. And this is being termed as the major reason behind the cancellation of the merger. Reliance is targeting to make India’s No 1 OTT and broadcasting platform.
Now as we all know that Disney-Star merger occupies several general Hindi channel as well as sports and movie channels too. Disney Merged with Hotstar last year and the result was Disney+Hotstar and this gave Hotstar ample of new content from various of streaming platforms worldwide to showcase in India. This garnered Disney+Hotstar a majority of subscribers in the past one year. Hence Sony and Viacom 18 we’re looking to venture into the same type of deal but unfortunately it is not happening.
And if the Sony-Viacom 18 deal would have been finalized then the resulting merger would be a combination of 77 channels, two digital content studios, two big OTT platforms, and three film studios.