With a period of 90 days due to an agreement that Zee and Sony’s entertainment conglomerates have announced the end of September last September, the first board of directors officially approved the two entity mergers yesterday.
According to the submission of regulations by Zee, Sony will hold a majority of 50.86% in new entities. The Zee promoter will accommodate 3.99%, and other shareholders get 45.15% of shares in the entity. New conglomerates will boast 75 TV channels, two video streaming services (Sonyliv and Zee5), two film studios (Zee Studios and Sony Pictures Indian films) and several other content-producing companies.
Basically, two linear networks companies, digital assets, production operations and program libraries become one.
Zee and invesco threat
The joint company will be registered in India and Zee’s Punit Goenka will lead the new company as Management and CEO Director, but Sony will have 5 representatives on board 9 new members.
“This is an important milestone for all of us, as two leading media & entertainment companies join hands to direct the next entertainment era filled with great opportunities. The joint company will create a comprehensive entertainment business, allowing us to serve our consumers with wider content choices On the whole platform, “Goenka said in a statement.
In addition to creating a Behemoth entertainment (the second largest entertainment network in terms of income), this agreement is also expected to come as a relief for zee promoters who face heat from Investco, Zee’s largest shareholder.
Investco has been looking for EGM to rearrange the Zee board and remove Goenka Puneet as CEO and MD. The problem is now in court and the company’s law court. How the invesco threat will play difficult to say now.
Star-Disney must be on guard
However, India has four main broadcasting channels or players – stars, colors, zees and Sony. Of these four, two have joined. So new entities will definitely become big players on the global platform and also in India.
Zee is available in 173 countries and reaches more than 600 million people in India every week. Sony, for its part, goes to more than 700 million viewers in India per week and is present in 167 countries.
On the OTT side, Sonyliv is currently revamping is an application with the help of TCS, and also increases its content from South India. It also reported that Sony was in talks with Amazon Prime to jointly bid the rights of streaming crickets that could include the rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL) which was very popular.
Zee sticks to the bollywood content while expanding its presence in the market like the US and Canada. For interesting content, Zee5 has also binded with players like TVF.
The combined needs of both can lead to shakeout in the Indian entertainment market are a long-term prognosis of analysts. Bintang market leader and Disney better carefully. For now have rivals that can match both in terms of content and money.
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