Disney-Reliance JV JioStar plans Rs 32,000 crore content push in 2026: Uday Shankar

Mumbai: Uday Shankar, Vice Chairman of JioStar, revealed that the merged entity of Reliance and Disney is set to invest over Rs 32,000 crore in 2026 in content development, encompassing sports and entertainment content. 

Speaking at the WAVES 2025 in Mumbai, Shankar placed this investment in the broader context of a deep-rooted commitment to Indian audiences.

Shankar revealed that JioStar—formed from the Disney-Reliance merger—has already invested heavily in content creation: “In 2024, the two entities together spent Rs 25,000 crore. In 2025, we’ve spent Rs 30,000 crore. And we expect to exceed Rs 32,000 crore next year. That’s over $10 billion in just three years.”

He clarified that such investment is fundamentally domestic-facing: “When global companies announce content spends, they often aim at international audiences. Our investments are made for Indian viewers, and recovered from them. It’s a completely different value cycle.”

The massive investment push comes amid a merger that was “one of the toughest things” in global media, Shankar noted. Since the integration, JioStar has seen strong growth in Pay TV and streaming.

“Pay TV has added numbers, not lost numbers, since we came together,” he said, challenging the earlier notion that the Pay TV market was dead. “We believe that India continues to be an exciting Pay TV market and will continue to be so for a while. We just stopped nurturing it. You starve even a healthy child, and it’ll fall sick.”

He noted, “More households are subscribing to cable and satellite. It’s a reminder that affordability and local relevance still matter. This will always be a price-sensitive market, and we must respect that.”

On streaming, Shankar confirmed “spectacular growth” and credited it to the company’s focus on affordability and pricing sensitivity. “If your ambition is to take it to 300 million or half a billion people, then you have to keep their affordability front and centre in your strategy.”

Despite content and distribution innovations, Shankar highlighted a major blind spot: the lack of innovation in monetisation. “There has been zero innovation in monetisation models,” he said, pointing out that today’s media players still rely on the traditional duo of advertising and subscription, even as new entrants like e-commerce and tech companies siphon off ad dollars.

“In order to innovate, you need to innovate on product and on content formats, and then you need to introduce new models of making money,” he added.