MUMBAI: From a marginal player in India, Disney is set to become the country’s largest entertainment company, with absolute domination in marque properties like IPL or the English Premier League and regional language TV show with assets spanning across broadcasting, digital, film entertainment, and sports. It may also have to review the combined portfolio and review the future of some of its strategic investments here.The transformative $52.4 billion all stock deal between Walt Disney Co and Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox gives the former unique edge in the world’s fastest growing media market, shaking up the industry sweepstakes in one click of the remote.Star India alone has given a guidance of $500 million in EBIT by 2018 and $1 billion by 2020.Apart from a very profitable TV broadcasting business, housed under Star India, the deal also gives Disney access to Hotstar , India’s leading over-the-top on-demand service; Fox Star Studios, the motion pictures business; and Star Sports. Additionally Disney would now own around 30% stake in Tata Sky and around 25% in leading production house Endemol Shine India. Considering it owns no similar DTH platforms globally, media analysts believe Disney will exit the venture soon.The biggest bonanza though is in broadcasting. The merged company will have close to 77 channels with leading brands across Hindi, Bengali, and Malayalam in the general and mass entertainment space. Disney India currently runs 8 channels, including kids (4), youth (2), and movie (2) channels, but it doesn’t have a presence in general entertainment categories. With the latest development, it will add close to 69 channels, including leading channels like Star Plus, Star Jalsha, Asianet and more, giving Disney a major lead over its peers.The deal will add Star Sports network to Disney. Interestingly, Walt Disney is the largest shareholder in ESPN, but it is not run by Disney India. ESPN earlier had a joint venture with Star India, which was dissolved in 2012 after Star acquired ESPN’s stake in the JV. Later, ESPN entered into an arrangement with Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN).It is not clear yet if ESPN and SPN will part ways, or continue their arrangement. But Star Sports has the rights of major sporting properties like Indian Premier League and BCCI rights for India cricket till 2018. It also owns Pro Kabaddi League and co-owns Indian Super League. Star Sports also has rights for premium properties like English Premier League, Formula One and Wimbledon.One of the major segments where Disney India is going to a get a leg up is the digital space, where the company currently has only interactive business. Disney will add Hotstar to its kitty, which will allow Disney to fight with the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video and broadcaster-owned Voot and Sony Liv.Hotstar is the leading OTT service with over 200 million download to date not just give a ready base of over 200 million. But with both media groups being shareholders of Hulu – a rival streaming service – along with Comcast, experts believe licencing agreements for content will be up for review as Hulu may become a dominant player in markets like India.The coming together of Disney’s film business with Fox Star studio will equally create a motion picture powerhouse with strong Hollywood and Bollywood offerings. Disney India’s Hindi film production business was suspended last year after it suffered major losses from films like Mohenjodaro and has been focussing on releasing Hollywood films of Marvel’s, LucasFilms, Pixar and Walt Disney Animation. Fox Star Studios (FSS), on the other hand, had a fantastic 2017 with multiple movies performing at the box office. FSS also has a deal with Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions, which will now be part of Disney.However a senior Disney executive said that his company had laid-off many people in the restructuring exercise last year. And with this deal, there could again be a wave of right-sizing.Despite its big bang acquisition of UTV from its founder Roni Screwvala, Disney mostly has remained a fringe entity despite making investments into films and broadcasting business. After suffering major losses in Hindi film production business, last year the company restructured its India operations to focus on its core strengths – Hollywood films and consumer products business.“In a way, Disney, which is so big globally, could never replicate its success in India till now. It lagged behind all major US entertainment companies in India, including Fox, Viacom and Sony Pictures,” said a media observer, who has worked at Disney as well as Star India. The bigger question, however, is who will head Disney in India? Will it be Uday Shankar of Star, who was recently elevated as president of Asia for Fox, or Mahesh Samat of Disney, who was elevated as MD of South Asia, earlier this year?Media experts agree that this is the biggest development in the Indian media and entertainment space since 1999, when Subhash Chandra bought back Murdoch’s stake in Zee Group (then Zee Television). This resulted in parting of ways between Chandra and Murdochs, and ensued a bitter rivalry between Star TV and Indian media conglomerate ZEE.