Here's All You Need To Know About JioStar!

Here's All You Need To Know About JioStar

The Rs 70,350 crore merger of Reliance’s Viacom18 and Disney Star will complete in the final stages and the new upcoming company JioStar will be live by November 13.

We turn to the kind of merged entity this will create. Here’s all you have to know concerning the merger. Those holding a JV position have the following equity stake RIL with 16.34% Viacom18 with 46.82% while Disney has an equity stake of 36.84%. Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani’s wife Nita Ambani will look after the new venture while Hindujas appointed Uday Shankar as the vice-chairman of the joint venture. More specifically, Kevin Vaz is preparing for the position of co-CEO together with Kiran Mani. Now they manage the broadcast division at Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd they have been heading the digital division the company.

TV18 and Viacom18 joint venture is known as IndiaCast. K Madhavan, the country manager and president of Disney Star, along with Sajith Sivanandan, the head of Disney+ Hotstar, both left the company last month. The head of distribution and international markets at Disney Star, Gurjeev Kapoor, has decided to step down. Ferzad Palia, business head at JioCinema, is all set to resign from his role. Earlier in June, Anil Jayaraj stepped down as the CEO from Viacom18 Sports. Meanwhile, Sanjog Gupta, who heads the sports business for Disney Star has remained.

The proposed joining of forces is expected to establish the two providers of streaming services, JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar, unified with 120 associated TV channels. The newly merged formed single entity’s entertainment OTT platform JioStar was launched on November 12 with the tagline “Coming Soon.” Both of these OTT platforms’ contents are expected to be accessed once it starts operation.

The consolidation will now entail the media rights for IPL and ICC matches together with the bilateral rights from the cricket boards of India, Australian and South Africa. Also the synergies which it will offer apart from cricket are Wimbledon, Pro Kabaddi League, MotoGP and the English Premier League (EPL). The two ad slots for cricket in TV and OTT networks will not be bundled.

The companies have voluntarily agreed that post merger, the combined entity will refrain from bundling TV and OTT ad slots for IPL, ICC, and BCCI cricketing rights until the current rights period ends.

The parties will also have to sell seven television channels among them being, Hungama and Super Hungama. This is in accordance with the conditions that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has given its approval to the merger of the two firms. In its submission to the independent commission the FNB had raised an issue as to the development of an empire in broadcasting of cricket matches. However it approved the mega merger on August 28 with certain voluntary modifications.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) approved the same in August this year which formed the nodal approval for the said amalgamation. Before the merger with Disney in September, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) cleared transfer of licences of television channels of Viacom 18 Media to Star India. It was given for the under license transfer, the license for non-news and current affair television channels.