DreamDTH Explains: What lies ahead for the merger of Zee and Sony?

What other properties do Zee and Sony own?

OTT platforms: Zee5 and SonyLIV

The Zee5 (also written as ZEE5) and SonyLIV OTT platforms have similar but somewhat different strategies for their content slate. SonyLIV made its entry all the way back in 2013 — well before Hotstar and Netflix — as the country’s first catch-up TV service from a major broadcaster, while Zee5 was launched in February 2018, some months after the mega-rebrand of ZEEL in October 2017, replacing the existing DittoTV and Ozee streaming services. Zee5 focuses more on movies and series in various Indian languages — including tie-ups with other platforms like ALTBalaji — and its USP is its content spanning 12 languages and its availability in most countries across the world, since it does not have any English premium content to boast of, like Disney+ Hotstar or Amazon Prime Video do. It also provides live streaming of its channels for paid subscribers, as well as several free-to-air news channels.

In contrast, SonyLIV, in addition to having all of the above — both its Hindi and Marathi TV shows and several regional-language series and movies (since it does not have any regional TV shows outside Marathi and Bengali) — also has a comprehensive sports offering, including most recently the Asian Games in Hangzhou. While it has several Hindi movies from its existing library that has been aired on Sony Max, most of its original digital-first movies are South Indian, particularly Malayalam. It also offered live streaming of its TV channels for premium subscribers, but this was discontinued on 30 August 2023.

SonyLIV was the first property of SPN to rebrand with the new Sony logo style in May 2020, over two years before the rebrand of all the TV channels on Diwali in October 2022. This was part of its new premium positioning with acclaimed series like Scam 1992 and its recent sequel Scam 2003, Rocket Boys, Tabbar, Maharani, Garmi and Avrodh: The Siege Within. Many of these shows are from the renowned digital media company The Viral Fever (TVF) such as Gullak, College Romance, Girls Hostel and the Marathi-language Shantit Kranti. These have established it as a major force to reckon with as a top Indian streamer of renowned series, on par with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar.

International TV channels

Both broadcasters have a large number of international TV channels to serve not only the Indian diaspora worldwide but also — this applies only for Zee and not Sony — various countries which need not have a large Indian population but are nevertheless interested in Indian content, especially in Africa. In major Indian diaspora strongholds like the US and Canada, the UK, the Middle East and Southeast Asian countries like Singapore, localised versions of flagship channels like Zee TV, Sony TV, Sony Sab, Zee Cinema and Sony Max operate. (More recently, in 2022, Sony launched the Sony Kal channel in the US and Canada, which is a FAST — Free Ad-supported Streaming Television — channel.) Besides, Zee has countless international channels to serve other countries, some of which are listed below.

• Southeast Asia: Zee operates Zee Nung (Thailand); Zee Bioskop (Indonesia) — not to be confused with Zee Biskope, the Bhojpuri movie channel — and Zee Phim (Vietnam). Previously it also had Zee Sine (Philippines), Zee Hiburan (Indonesia) and Zee Variasi (Malaysia) which have ceased broadcasting. Both Zee TV and Zee Tamil have Southeast Asian feeds, since Singapore and Malaysia have large Tamil populations.
• Africa: This is Zee’s largest local market outside the Indian diaspora, and its biggest presence is in South Africa, the continent’s largest English-speaking country with a significant Indian diaspora. It operates multiple channels like Zee World, Zee Magic, Zee One, Zee Bollynova, Zee Alem (in Ethiopia’s Amharic language) and most recently Zee Zonke in South Africa’s isiZulu language. Disney Star also operates the Star Life and Star Select channels in South Africa.
• Americas: Zee Mundo serves the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America. Moreover, not only Hindi channels but also several regional Zee channels like Zee Marathi and Zee Telugu have feeds in the US.
• Europe: Zee has a separate Russian channel, Zee TV Russia, which does not share the same graphics and branding as the Indian Zee TV. It closed its linear TV channels in the UK a couple of years ago, like Star did in the US. It also used to operate Zee One in Germany, but this was also shuttered.
• Arab countries: Zee has long operated two Arabic channels in the Middle East and North Africa: Zee Aflam, a movie channel, and Zee Alwan, an entertainment channel.

Other entertainment properties

Both companies have a large number of assets in other categories that are as well-known as their TV channels. In music, Zee established its music label Zee Music Company in 2014 and has quickly gone on to become one of the most important Indian music labels, after established names like T-Series, Saregama and Sony Music India. Its YouTube channel boasts 100 million subscribers, and hence is one of the top 10 channels globally. (Note that while Sony Music India, like Culver Max Entertainment, is also fully owned by Sony in Japan, the two are completely independent of, and unrelated to, each other — unlike Zee Music Company, which is a subsidiary of ZEEL.) It also has several other subsidiaries like Zee Live for live event management and Zee Theatre, plus several others that are directly owned by the Essel Group instead of ZEEL, like Dish TV/d2h, Siti Cable and Zee Learn.

Zee’s film production house Zee Studios (not to be confused with Zee Studio, the previous name of its English movie channel &flix until 2018) has churned out a number of notable movies across several languages. Most recently, it produced the blockbuster hit Gadar 2 starring Sunny Deol and Ameesha Patel — who reprise their roles from Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001) — as well as Salman Khan’s Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan and Rani Mukerji’s Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway earlier in 2023. Most Zee Studios productions’ satellite rights go to Zee Cinema/&pictures, including several co-productions like the Akshay Kumar-starrer Good Newwz (2019) which was co-produced with Dharma Productions. This despite Dharma movies typically going to Viacom18-owned Colors Cineplex, barring a few like Brahmastra: Part One – Shiva which was co-produced with Star Studios and hence went to Star Gold.

Culver Max Entertainment, for its part, operates Sony Pictures International Productions, which has several popular films to its credit like Piku (2015), Pad Man (2018) and Major (2022). Most of their satellite rights naturally belong to Sony Max, but Pad Man — also an Akshay Kumar-starrer — went to Zee Cinema instead. Additionally, its content licensing and distribution arm is Studio NEXT, which owns the intellectual property for several of the company’s famous shows like Kaun Banega Crorepati and Shark Tank India. As mentioned, despite the same name and ownership, Sony Music India has no connection with Culver Max Entertainment.

Conclusion

With such a massive collection of television, streaming, music, film and other assets, the combined Zee–Sony entity is set to be India’s largest media company — and could very well be one of the largest in the world, in terms of its humongous scale and reach serving not only India, now the world’s most populous nation, but also crores of people across the Indian diaspora and even non-Indians. Few media companies outside the US can boast of such a massive global presence, with both Sony (as an Indian media company, rather than as a Japanese electronics company) and Zee having global brand-name recognition like Star. Their union will create a giant across genres and languages that both Disney Star and Reliance’s Viacom18 would do well to regard with great caution in order to compete and thrive — as we will discuss in the next article.