Advanced Television

Joint Venture

Kantar & LiveRamp partnership

Kantar, the data, insights and consulting company, and data connectivity platform LiveRamp have partnered in the UK to provide hundreds of new audience segments for online campaign activation, built on the unique in-depth online and offline consumer behaviour from Kantar’s syndicated datasets, including TGI (in-depth consumer behaviour), Worldpanel (purchase) and ComTech (consumer technology). With figures […]

July 1, 2020

Finland: NENT & Elisa to combine streaming services

Nordic Entertainment Group (NENT Group), the Nordic region’s streaming company, and Elisa, Finland’s telecoms operator, will combine their streaming services in Finland in Q4 2020. The combined standalone service will be called Elisa Viihde Viaplay and bring together Viaplay’s original Nordic productions, Hollywood films and series, and kids’ content with Elisa Viihde Aitio’s wide range […]

June 24, 2020

Intelsat wants Court to modify BlackSky loan

Last October Intelsat made a $50 million “synergistic” loan to BlackSky, owned by Spaceflight Industries. Now it wants the Court to amend the loan obligations and permit certain sales plans to proceed despite the bankruptcy. Spaceflight describes itself as a ‘next generation’ space company with launch facilities, and its BlackSky division specialises in images from […]

June 1, 2020

La Liga, Mediapro joint-venture in China

Spain’s top football league, La Liga, and Mediapro’s subsidiary Super Sports have agreed to set up a joint-venture in China seeking expansion into Asia. The 15-year deal aims to sell advertising and media in the Chinese market in a move to allow La Liga to fully break into the country with local advertisers, as well […]

May 18, 2020From David Del Valle in Madrid

Liberty Global, Telefónica to merge UK operations

As recently rumoured, and following confirmation that talks were taking place, Liberty Global and Telefónica are to merge their UK operations in a 50-50 joint venture that brings together Liberty’s multiplay operator Virgin Media and Telefónica’s O2, the country’s largest mobile platform. The pair say the combination creates a stronger fixed and mobile competitor in […]

May 7, 2020By Colin Mann

Bidders emerge for OneWeb assets

Whilst all the details aren’t yet known, there are serious names who have entered bids for some or all of OneWeb’s assets. By the May 4th deadline, at least six proposals had been received by either Millbank LLP or Guggenheim Securities, who are acting on behalf of the operation. While not yet being specific about […]

May 7, 2020By Chris Forrester

Viasat Consumer, Canal Digital JV named ‘Allente’

The previously-announced combination of Viasat Consumer, Nordic Entertainment Group (NENT Group)’s satellite pay-TV and broadband-TV business, with Canal Digital, Telenor Group’s satellite pay-TV business, into a new joint venture company has been completed. The combination was approved by the European Commission on April 30th. The closing of the transaction creates a large-scale player that the […]

May 6, 2020

Virgin Media, O2 merger talks confirmed

A filing made by Telefónica to the Spanish media regulator May 4th confirms that its O2 cellular operator in the UK is in formal talks with Liberty Global-backed Virgin Media. As is usual in these cases, the filing stresses there is no certainty of the talks leading to a successful outcome: “The process started between […]

May 4, 2020By Chris Forrester

Analyst: Virgin/O2 talks ‘bolt out of the blue’

Although raising the possibility of such a move nearly a year ago, Paolo Pescatore, TMT Analyst at PP Foresight, has nevertheless described the possible merger of Liberty Global’s UK multiplay operator Virgin Media with Telefónica’s O2 mobile telco in the UK as “a bolt out of the blue” and an intriguing move that is more […]

May 4, 2020By Colin Mann

Virgin Media to merge with O2?

Numerous reports suggest that John Malone’s Liberty Global is in talks with Spanish telco Telefónica about merging its UK multiplay operator Virgin Media with Telefónica’s O2 mobile business. Bloomberg and Reuters are reporting that Telefónica has been weighing options for the mobile business since 2016 when a previous £10.3 billion deal takeover of O2 by […]

May 2, 2020By Chris Forrester