Murdoch / News Corp to buy Spains Canal+ satellite TV service from Prisa TV?

Grupo Prisa is in talks with Telefónica to sell a stake in satellite broadcaster Digital Plus for as much as €900m.

Prisa owns 56 per cent of Digital Plus / Canal+, the largest pay TV operator in Spain by subscribers.

Telefónica, which itself owns 22 per cent of Digital Plus, is interested in buying Prisa’s stake in an effort to offer so-called triple and quad-play bundles of internet, fixed line, mobile and pay TV to its clients.

Digital Plus holds some of the rights to broadcast Spanish football league matches.

However, people close to the process said that Telefónica appeared unwilling to pay more than €900m for the stake.

Financial reporters suggest that News Corp has already made an approach to Telefónica, without whose agreement any News Corp involvement would be a non-starter. Representatives from News Corp and BSkyB are understood to have held informal discussions with Prisa earlier this year over the Spanish media group’s pay TV operation. However these discussions are no longer active, according to people close to the situation.

Both News Corp and BSkyB declined to comment.

News Corp’s expertise gained at BSkyB and Sky Deutschand may be welcome at Prisa, which lost 28,350 satellite subscribers in the first quarter, and has seen a gradual subscriber erosion in recent quarters. It currently has 1,691,281 subscribers.


Note that if BskyB / News Corp do buy Canal+, it does not mean that UK TV channels like BBC ITV will be available on the Spanish satellite TV service. It will be operated separately to Sky TV UK, as they have done in Germany (Sky Deutschland) and Italy (Sky Italia).

source:rapidtvnews.com/index.php/2013061328279/murdoch-sounds-telefonica-out-regarding-purchase-of-canal.html
source: ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/bfee4616-d44b-11e2-8639-00144feab7de.html