MS Dhoni inks long-term deal with Banijay Asia to create content

Former captain ‘cool’ of Indian cricket, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, has entered the entertainment business with a long-term partnership deal with production house Banijay Asia. Dhoni Entertainment—a company floated by Dhoni this year— and Banijay Asia will create content across genres for multiple platforms.

Banijay Asia is a 50:50 joint venture between Banijay, one of the world’s largest independent content creation companies, and former Endemol Shine India managing director Deepak Dhar.

“After my biopic, I always wanted to do something in the entertainment space,” Dhoni told ET. “It always captivated me, kept me gripped as there are a lot of fresh concepts I would like to bring; never-seen-before content to the table,” Dhoni said.

On partnering with Dhar and Banijay, Dhoni said, “I decided to partner with Banijay Asia for the quality of content they have created so far, and with this partnership, I look forward to bring something which is more than exciting and stimulating!”

Under the partnership deal, both entities will make investments to create premium content that will be distributed across platforms in India and south east Asian markets, said Deepak Dhar, founder of Banijay Asia.

“With the entire digital ecosystem evolving, we are seeing a great demand for content. Naturally, it is attracting big personalities. What we need is to bring in players with vision and credibility,” said Dhar. “Together, we are excited as we aim to bring an array of differentiated shows for our audiences across platforms.”

While this is the first time Dhoni is officially getting into the entertainment sector, it is not his first tryst with the industry.

His manager, Arun Pandey, has already produced Dhoni’s biopic, ‘MS Dhoni: The Untold Story’, which was directed by Neeraj Pandey. When asked what content the partnership will be working on, Dhoni said, “We are open to all kinds of subjects and not just restricting ourselves to sports for the background I have. We are working on various concepts right now and have few projects in the pipeline, which we will announce soon.”