Mumbai, 3/3: Asia’s richest tycoon, Mukesh Ambani, won big in Indian telecom by making voice calls free and data dirt-cheap. Now, he may bring the same aggression to entertainment by not charging customers for cricket, even though he has paid top dollar to acquire the rights.
Last June, Viacom18 Media Pvt., a joint venture between Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. and Paramount Global, spent $2.7 billion to win an exclusive, five-year live-streaming deal for Indian Premier League matches, outbidding Walt Disney & Co., the previous owner. Disney’s Hotstar app eked out 76 cents a month from each of the 50 million Indian subscribers who signed up primarily to watch IPL in the cricket-crazy nation. If that was chump change, Ambani has decided to forgo it altogether — at least for this year’s tournament that starts March 31. He may have a bigger prize in mind: Commerce.
The timing is just right for the eyeball-grabbing initiative. Jio Platforms Ltd., Ambani’s almost-seven-year-old mobile-internet startup, is probably headed for an initial public offering — after global investors get over the $140 billion meltdown in rival Gautam Adani’s debt-fueled stocks. Adani, too, has an ambitious plan for a consumer super-app, though his priority now must be to steady his sprawling infrastructure empire. With Adani distracted, Ambani’s burgeoning digital domain might get a leg up.
