Bharti Airtel on Wednesday confirmed that it is in talks with the Tata Group over a potential merger of Tata Play with Bharti Telemedia.
In an exchange filing, Airtel said, “We wish to submit that we are in talks to explore a potential transaction to achieve a combination of Tata Group’s direct-to-home (DTH) business, housed under Tata Play, with Bharti Telemedia, a subsidiary of Airtel, in a structure acceptable to all parties.”
While Tata Play is the country’s market leader in the DTH space with a 31.99% market share by subscribers or around 19 million connections, Airtel’s DTH service, housed under Bharti Telemedia, had a market share of 29.38% as on September 30, 2024, as per official data released by the Telecom Regulator Authority of India (Trai).
India’s total paid DTH connections (excluding DD Freedish service) stood at 59.91 million at September 2024 end. The merger will thus lead to the creation of a clear leader in the country’s paid DTH space.
The move to merge Tata Play and Airtel Digital TV, analysts and experts said, will help Airtel push its digital services into more urban households, thus helping it compete more effectively with telecom market leader Reliance Jio.
Both Airtel and Jio have been offering bundled services in order to increase the ticket size of their respective connections. Jio offers converged home broadband and TV services, while Airtel has similar offers as well.
More recently, both have introduced fixed wireless access (FWA) offerings bundled with entertainment options in order to grow their home broadband subscriber base.
The DTH space has been facing headwinds with the emergence of over-the-top (OTT) platforms and IPTV options, especially with the expanding price range of smart TVs.
Most DTH players, including Tata Play, have taken steps to stem customer churn in light of the migration to connected TV (CTV) and IPTV. For instance, Tata Play also offers home broadband services under the brand Tata Play Fiber (earlier called Tata Play Broadband) since 2015.
Tata Play is jointly owned by the Tata Group (70%) and Disney (30%). The latter got its stake in the DTH player when it bought off 21st Century Fox’s India business back in 2019.
It is not clear what the contours of the merger will be regarding Disney’s stake in the business, considering Reliance merged its media assets with Walt Disney’s India business late last year. Currently, Reliance Industries holds 16.34% in the resulting JV, its subsidiary Viacom18 holds 46.82% while Disney holds 36.84%.
