The Walt Disney Company is betting big on India as American consumers continue to abandon the woke entertainment giant in droves.
Disney is teaming up with with Asia’s richest man to create a new media giant in India that is expected to reach more than 750 million people. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries and Disney are combining their digital streaming platforms and 100 TV channels in a joint venture worth about $8.5 billion, the companies announced this week.
The venture will give Disney access to a consumer market that is more than twice the size of the U.S.
Disney already has a streaming app in India — Hotstar, which has fallen on hard times after the service lost the digital rights to stream the enormously popular Indian Premier League cricket matches to Ambani’s company.
The new venture appears to be an effort by Disney to recapture those viewers as well as expand its reach even further on the subcontinent.
Disney’s big play for India comes amid the company’s ongoing woes back home, as American consumers grow increasingly disenchanted with Disney’s embrace of far-left politics and LGBTQ messaging to children.
The Disney+ streaming service has seen its domestic subscriber base stagnate at around 46 million for the past year, an ominous sign for a streaming service that is only four years old. In the most recent quarter, the service lost 400,000 domestic customers — Disney+’s largest-ever reported domestic decline.
CEO Bob Iger is struggling to pull Disney out of financial trouble, churning out an unprecedented string of box-office flops . He also oversaw one of the company’s biggest layoffs ever with 7,000 jobs slashed worldwide last year.
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