Ergen: DirecTV/DISH merger “inevitable”
August 12, 2021
By Chris Forrester
Charlie Ergen, speaking to analysts on the DISH Network post-results analysts call, again touched on the prospects for a merger between DirecTV and Ergen’s DISH, saying a combination was “inevitable”.
While the question and prospects of a merger have been discussed for some time, Ergen told analysts that, as he had said before, “that those two companies go together, that’s inevitable”.
“From a regulatory point of view, obviously, there’s less and less reality to objections to [a merger] because, obviously, the hundreds of billions of dollars of broadband deployment and continued competition from the programmers themselves in the marketplace. So, I think that’s just – we’ll just have to wait and see whether there’s desire on everybody’s part to do that. But, I think it’s a timing issue more than anything else,” Ergen stated.