After IPL Rights Pullback, Is It Time For Disney To Rethink Streaming Goals?

Investors heaved a big sigh of relief over the weekend after Disney decided that renewing its media rights for Indian Premier League cricket matches wasn’t worth the steep investment, especially given the low return it generated despite so many Indian fans.

But now comes the hard part: when does Disney acknowledge how much more difficult it will be to reach its stated streaming subscriber goals of up to 260 million by the end of 2024? If it comes clean now, it may take another hit to its share price. But given how far the shares have fallen already, maybe now is as good a time as any to rip the bandage off.

To quickly recap: Disney inherited the IPL rights in 2019, when it bought Star India’s parent company, Fox. Those rights, for both broadcast and streaming, cost $2.5 billion in 2017. This gave Disney an inside track on tens of millions of cricket-mad customers across one of the world’s biggest and fastest-growing consumer markets.

By this year, with Star integrated into Disney Plus and IPL bigger than ever, the Mouse House claimed 50.1 million Indian subscribers. That was more than a third of its global total of around 205 million subscribers on Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, Hulu and Star.

But those 50 million Indian subscribers only generate 76 cents a month in average revenue per user, about one-eighth what Disney extracts from everyone else.

With IPL rights renewal up for bidding last weekend, Disney took a step back. Spending somewhere around $3 billion for five years of rights, for an audience that generates around $500 million a year didn’t make sense.

Nor did the math add up for several other big U.S. companies mulling a bid. Apple, Amazon, Alphabet's YouTube TV unit) and Netflix declined to take part.

Yes, Disney is still spending heavily on cricket in India. It bid $3 billion for just the broadcast rights to 410 IPL matches a year for the next five years. Those games will feed the dozens of broadcast stations the company owns around the Subcontinent, and probably will generate billions in advertising and other revenues.

On the streaming side, the $2.6 billion winning bid came from Viacom18. Backers include Paramount Global and investment firm Bodhi Tree Systems. But also Reliance Industries, the do-everything Indian conglomerate owned by Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani.

Ambani clan/Reliance owns the Mumbai Indians IPL franchise, one of the league’s most popular teams in the country’s biggest city and media center.

Both the Ambani clan and its team have been the subject of reality TV shows and endless breathless media coverage in India for years. Think the Kardashians multiplied by Elon Musk to get a vague idea of the wealth and media omnipresence.

Beyond that, it’s entirely likely the Ambanis and Reliance can make far more money with the streaming service – by cross-promoting the Reliance Jio wireless carrier, household products and much else – than perhaps anyone else.

That especially includes Disney, which now has some additional decisions to make.

The Mouse House reaped a hefty premium on its share price for more than two years thanks substantially to those glittering streaming subscriber numbers.

And Disney executives say they’re still well positioned to retain most of their 50.1 million subscribers, given all their Hollywood franchises and thousands of hours of local content.

But there are reasons for skepticism here, given the centrality of IPL rights in Star/Disney Plus success. For instance, when IPL games were delayed by the pandemic, Disney’s CFO blamed it for a drop in quarterly streaming adds there. And when the games resumed this spring, about half of new subscribers signed on just before the season began.

Realistically, then, what’s it going to take for Disney to acknowledge that its streaming goals will be far more difficult to achieve without IPL? It’s not like investors are giving Disney or anyone else a streaming premium these days.

During the recent market collapse, Disney shares also went tumbling into a rabbit hole. In March of last year, shares topped out at $197 apiece. Prices Wednesday were bouncing around $96 a share, and that was actually slightly up from the day before.

For perspective, other than a brief collapse in the weeks immediately after the pandemic hit, Disney shares haven’t been this cheap since 2017. That's before it launched Disney Plus, or even had bought most of Fox.

As CNBC founderTom Rogers said, buying Disney now would be like getting the streaming service (and FX, and a controlling share of Hulu, etc) for free.

So, what’s CEO Bob Chapek waiting for? Though he’s embattled on multiple fronts, it’s unlikely Disney would suffer any further share decline if the company acknowledged its new streaming reality.

Then again, last week Chapek summarily dismissed the well-regarded Peter Rice. Of note, Rice was touted as a possible Chapek successor, should the Disney board not renew Chapek’s contract before it expires in February.

Given that, maybe Chapek doesn’t feel like he has much room to acknowledge the streaming industry’s changing realities and expectations. But investors are surely noticing. Just take a look at how they’re valuing Disney’s streaming dreams now.