Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) said on Thursday it has agreed to buy Paramount Global's entire 13.01 per cent stake in local entertainment network Viacom 18 Media for about Rs 4,286 crore.
The announcement comes days after RIL, Viacom18 and The Walt Disney Company (Disney) sewed up a deal to form a joint venture. Reliance and Viacom18 will hold 63.16 per cent — 16.34 per cent by Reliance and 46.82 per cent by Viacom18 — and the rest by Disney.
The effective stake of Reliance will now rise after the deal with Paramount.
In a regulatory filing, RIL said it has signed a binding agreement with two subsidiaries of Paramount Global to acquire a 13.01 per cent equity stake of Viacom 18 held by Paramount.
At the same time, Paramount Global said the closure is subject to the satisfaction of certain customary conditions, including the receipt of regulatory approvals as well as the completion of the joint venture among Reliance, Viacom18 and Star Disney.
Viacom18 has 40 television channels, including Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV.
Paramount said it will continue to license its content to Viacom18 after the closing of the deal. It already streams its content through Reliance's JioCinema.
RIL said it holds compulsorily convertible preference shares of Viacom18 representing a 57.48 per cent equity stake on a fully diluted basis. Post the completion of this transaction, the company's equity stake in Viacom18 will increase to 70.49 per cent on a fully diluted basis.
As part of the Reliance-Disney deal, the media undertaking of Viacom18 would be merged with Star India Pvt Ltd (SIPL) through a court-approved scheme of arrangement. Reliance had also agreed to invest Rs 11,500 crore in the joint venture.
The merger of the Indian operations of Disney with Reliance comes amid the failed amalgamation of Sony and Zee in February that could have created a $10 billion giant.
Shares of Reliance on Thursday ended sideways at Rs 2,865.25 on the BSE.
Tata Play
The Tata group is reportedly planning to buy Walt Disney Company’s stake in Tata Play which will give it full control of the satellite television broadcaster.
A Bloomberg report on Thursday said the companies have held preliminary talks to buy Disney’s significant minority stake which will value Tata Play at about $1 billion.
If the deal goes through, it will be the second big transaction for the Burbank, California-based giant that merged its media operations in India with Reliance. This transaction announced late last month valued the joint venture at $8.5 billion.
The latest buzz follows another recent report which said Reliance is eyeing Disney’s nearly 30 per cent stake in Tata Play.
Tata Sons holds a little over 50 per cent in the broadcaster with the rest being held by Disney and Singapore’s Temasek, which has a 20 per cent share.
Temasek was in discussions with the Tata group last year to sell its stake.
Tata Play was in the news in 2022 when it became the first company in the country to adopt the pre-filing route for a proposed initial public offering (IPO).
For the year ended March 31, 2023, Tata Play which competes against giants such as Netflix, JioCinema, Amazon Prime and Disney+Hotstar had reported a loss of Rs 105 crore on revenues of almost Rs 4,500 crore.
