Speculations have been around for a long time now around the future of Disney in India. There has been talks about the company looking to sell its India business. Reliance was believed to have made a $10 billion offer for the proposal. But ending these speculations, CEO of Disney, Bob Iger has said that they plan to stay in India.
The CEO said that the company was assessing all options available to them and would like to stay in business in India. Disney has been performing well with its linear television business which is Star India. Star India has been a profitable business for Disney and the losses suffered by the company are coming from other parts of the business.
One year back, Hotstar had 61.3 million paid subscribers but it has dropped significantly to 37.6 million.
This drop in subscriber numbers was fuelled by two big blows that Hotstar suffered at the hands of JioCinema. First war losing the rights to host the Indian Premier League and then Warner Bros Discovery made an exclusive deal with JioCinema taking away a lot of content from Hotstar.
Bob Iger believes that the company needs a little restructuring and it could potentially save them. India is potentially the biggest market that they can tap on and they are not going to let this go.
