Televisa passes 10m pay-TV subs
March 5, 2015
For the first time in the company’s history, the Televisa Group passed the 10 million pay-TV subscriber mark during Q4 2014 according to Dataxis estimates.
By the end of the third quarter of 2014, Televisa had 9,880,000 pay-TV subscribers including all of their Latin American operations. These include Izzi Telecom, Cablecom, Cablemás, Cablevisión and Sky Mexico, as well as Sky’s DTH operations in Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.
In January 2015, after the Cablecom purchase, Televisa announced the acquisition of another Mexican cable operator, Telecable (Cablevision Red). Once the operation is approved by the regulator, the acquisition will add close to 395,000 pay-TV subscribers and thus, the company will have ended the year with more than 10 million subs.
By Q3 2014, Televisa’s operations had a 61.4 per cent market share over the total Mexican pay-TV market. On the other hand, the cable operations had a 34.1 per cent share (3,370,280 subs), while the group’s main operation, Sky Mexico, reached 39.3 per cent.
The series of acquisitions have secured Televisa an almost complete coverage of the Mexican cable TV market. With Telecable’s purchase, Televisa will cover Mexico City and 98 other cities.
“The acquisitions were possible thanks to the fact that América Móvil is considered a dominant economic agent by the IFT, the Mexican telecom regulator”, explained Martin Hartkopf, Dataxis Senior Analyst and author of the “Televisa” report, part of the Pay-TV Operators Series 2015. He concluded, “The new telecommunications bill allows a company to consolidate by acquiring smaller companies, as long as there is a dominant telecom agent”.