Mukesh Ambani says Reliance media hit $3.7B revenue in FY26, led by Dhurandhar

Mukesh Ambani used Reliance Industries’ annual general meeting in Mumbai on Friday to drop a very specific number: the company’s media and entertainment operations brought in INR34,917 crore, which he framed as $3.7 billion, in FY26. And he also named the engines behind it, with live sports and the “Dhurandhar” film franchise among the primary drivers.

This matters because Reliance is not describing media as a side project. The disclosure ties the scale of revenue directly to two kinds of demand that tend to reinforce each other. Live sports can pull recurring audiences, while a film franchise can build deeper consumer loyalty and merchandising or downstream content value. When a conglomerate with serious capital discipline highlights both in the same breath, it is effectively telling investors that it plans to compound attention, not just monetize single releases.

Ambani’s description covered a business spanning multiple Reliance-linked platforms and companies: JioStar, JioHotstar, Jio Studios, and Network18. In other words, the media operation is presented as a network, not a single studio or a single channel. That structure is important in a market where content costs, platform economics, and distribution reach all interact. If one part of the stack is strong, it can subsidize or amplify the others, but only if the ecosystem is tight enough to capture value end-to-end.

The “Dhurandhar” franchise is also doing heavier lifting than a typical entertainment brand note. Ambani singled it out as a primary driver of revenue in FY26, which implies the company is thinking beyond audience spikes and toward franchise economics that can be forecasted and scaled. Film franchises are typically attractive to large operators because they can become anchor assets. Anchors matter when you are negotiating partnerships, planning releases, and trying to hold user engagement over time.

Then there is live sports, which Ambani also flagged as a major driver. Sports is the category that turns passive viewing into scheduled, habitual consumption. It is also the content type that can make a platform sticky, because viewers return for fixtures rather than for novelty. For Reliance, aligning sports with its broader media and entertainment footprint across JioStar and JioHotstar suggests a strategy built around repeat demand, not just catalog sales.

The disclosure sits within a bigger reality check for India’s media industry: content businesses face constant pressure from rising production and rights costs, while distribution platforms race to lock in engagement. Conglomerates like Reliance often have an advantage because they can cross-leverage network distribution and consumer data infrastructure. But they also face scrutiny around market structure and competition, particularly when vertically integrated companies control both distribution pathways and content development. Even without delving into regulatory specifics beyond what is in the source, the strategic point is clear: scaling content and platforms at the same time raises the stakes for regulators and for competing players.

Ambani’s comments also referenced the financial profile of the media operation by noting that the business recorded an EBITDA, with the source truncating the sentence afterward. Even so, the inclusion of EBITDA is a sign that the company is not only chasing top-line growth but trying to show improved operating performance. In media, revenue can grow while profitability lags, so the mention of EBITDA is the board-level language decision-makers look for when they want assurance that scale is translating into cash-generation potential.

For peers, this disclosure is a scoreboard moment. When Reliance publicly ties INR34,917 crore ($3.7 billion) revenue in FY26 to live sports and the “Dhurandhar” film franchise, it raises the bar for other players trying to build durable entertainment ecosystems. It tells boards and executives that content strategy is now a capital allocation decision, not a branding exercise. And it signals that Reliance’s media push is designed to keep compounding, using franchises and recurring sports demand as the foundation across Jio Studios, Network18, and the JioStar and JioHotstar channels.