Altice plans SFR media consolidation
April 25, 2016
From Pascale Paoli-Lebailly in Paris
Altice owner and CEO Patrice Drahi is about to consolidate all the group’s media activities into its SFR telecom subsidiary. According to French Sunday newspaper JDD, the reorganisation, set to be announced April 27th, will also lead to the launch by affiliate group NextRadioTV of two pay-TV sport channels called SFR Sport. Those new channels will be available to SFR subscribers but also distributed on other platforms. Altice won the coverage rights for the English Premier League for the next three seasons in November 2015.
To concentrate Altice media activities into SFR, the telco is set to buy Altice Media group, which owns press titles such as Libération and L’Express, as well as Israeli news channel i24news and Altice’s 49 per cent holdings in NextRadioTV, which operates channels BFM TV, RMC Découverte and BFM Business.
According to JDD, such a move would the first in France to create an operator model mixing telecoms and media, inspired by the BT model.
Drahi and NextRadioTV’s CEO Alain Weill are also reported working on the creation of TV channels in the US with cable MSO Cablevision, acquired last year by Altice.