German DTH provider Sky Deutschland may seek to raise some funding, backed by its shareholder News Corp, in order to acquire broadcasting rights for Germany’s top football league, the Bundesliga.
Sky Deutschland CEO Brian Sullivan was recently…
German DTH provider Sky Deutschland may seek to raise some funding, backed by its shareholder News Corp, in order to acquire broadcasting rights for Germany’s top football league, the Bundesliga.
Sky Deutschland CEO Brian Sullivan was recently quoted saying that his company was looking to snatch Deutsche Telekom’s IPTV and mobile rights during the January 2012 auction. The DTH operator already controls pay-TV rights for the current season.
The financial institutions working on this potential funding might include RBS and UniCredit, the company’s relationship banks, SatelliteFinance understands.
Citing a note from Morgan Stanley to its clients, media reports claim the amount raised will be approximately around €75m-€100m. Sky Deutschland declined to comment on the speculation.
Buoyed by News Corp’s continued financial support, Sky Deutschland, which has been struggling to reach profitability in the German market dominated by cable operators, has spent heavily on marketing its products recently.
In February this year, the company said that it would get an incremental shareholder loan of €48m provided by News Adelaide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of News Corp, to support the launch of ‘Sky Sport News HD’ in Germany and Austria.
That deal came just a month after the satellite broadcaster announced that it had reached an agreement with News Corp to supplement the gross proceeds from the €342m August 2010 rights issue with a new €58m shareholder loan. That additional money was also expected to be used to invest in the broadcaster’s high definition offering. The rights offering, which was fully underwritten by News Corp, was Sky Deutschland’s seventh in five years.
It has been estimated that Sky Deutschland needs to secure approximately 3 million subscribers to reach break even. In its third quarter 2011 results on 10 November, the company revealed that it had added 204,000 net customers so far in 2011, bringing its total number of subscribers to 2.86 million.
