BSkyB now faces a more aggressive challenge from BT Sport than at least one analyst had anticipated. BT Sport will be made available free to BT’s broadband and ADSL customers, and thus has “laid down the gauntlet to BSkyB, which has been steadily growing market share, primarily in ADSL,” according to Sara Simon, media analyst at Berenberg Bank. A report [...]
BSkyB subscribers who are HDTV viewers and paying for a Sky+ set-top box are receiving documents and e-mails telling them that from now on they can watch 3D transmissions and have ‘free’ access to Sky’s Formula 1 coverage as part of their core subscription. The messages are part of BSkyB’s fight back over the threat from BT Sport offers which [...]
The US government is cutting back on spending, and this is beginning to hurt Eutelsat’s revenues. While the satellite operator is stressing ‘business as normal’ and is firmly maintaining its official revenue guidance although admitting growth could be at the “lower end” of forecasts. It seems that shareholders took the warnings of lower revenues from the US military as a [...]
Brian Sullivan, CEO at Sky Deutschland, is doing rather well at his new Munich home. A long-term News Corp staffer, with a 13-year solid reputation built at BSkyB, he has been in post at Sky-D since January 2010. He inherited a subscriber base of 2.4 million, and a reputation that German viewers were somehow different from the rest of the [...]
On January 31st an Intelsat satellite worth $406 million was lost just 40 seconds after lift-off from the Sea Launch floating rocket platform. The fault, in a Russian-built Zenith rocket, has now been identified, and Sea Launch says the launch platform is likely to return to business later this year. The failure has meant that Sea Launch, which only emerged [...]
TopTV, a digital broadcasting rival to South Africa’s Multichoice, is in financial trouble. Up until now the front-runner to buy the troubled company was StarTimes, a China-backed operation with an existing portfolio of African-based pay-TV investments. A new potential buyer (‘Dynamic TV Consortium’) has now emerged in the shape of local South African entrepreneurs, but with one major snag: Multichoice [...]
Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network, never far from controversy, has been criticised by a Federal court judge for being “evasive” and “obstructive” during pre-trial discovery of documentation in a case alleging that Dish placed millions of unwanted telephone calls to consumers and violated telemarketing sales rules. The suit was started by the USA’s Federal Trade Commission in August last year, and [...]
ODM, the Johannesburg-based pay-TV broadcaster which trades as TopTV, is suffering financial problems. Luxembourg-based SES owns 20 per cent of the business. A rescue plan is being mounted by China’s StarTimes Group, itself backed by serious cash investments from China’s Africa Development Fund (ADF) and the China Development Bank. Up until late 2012 the Chinese had reportedly invested more than [...]
When the books were closed at the end of April 17, it was revealed that Intelsat’s Initial Public Offering was very poorly supported. Even though the price range set by the company was for shares to be bought in the $21-$25 range, the actual price achieved was a disappointing $18. Intelsat sold just 19.3 million shares (originally 21.7 million were [...]
Modern Times Group (MTG) unveils its results on April 18th, and market sentiment suggests the numbers may not be good. A report to clients from investment bankers Morgan Stanley states that while pay-TV in the Nordic region – where MTG mainly operates – is “well anchored”, and helped by MTG’s margin guidance of a 10-12 per cent EBITA margin, the [...]
