Grup Televisa and Univision Holdings Inc will join forces to compete in streaming, Netflix’s dominant business.
The two companies agreed to merge their content assets to leverage their streaming platform to market.
“Televisa-Univision will have as a strategic vision its digital transformation to conquer the Spanish streaming market, so it will launch a joint platform with a potential market of 600 million people who speak this language, of which 128 million are Mexicans and 61 million are Hispanic in the United States, “he said in a statement.
Televisa-Univision will reach joint sales of 4 billion dollars and EBITDA of 1,600 million, with a margin greater than 40% post-synergies for integration, he added.
“Combining the content assets of Televisa and Univision had been a dream that had not been consolidated. Until now.
“I am very pleased with the new partnership with Univision and the opportunity for Mexican talent to be seen and recognized in the United States and soon in the rest of the world. We will be a global company,” said Emilio Azcárraga Jean, executive president of the Televisa Board of Directors.
Azcárraga stressed that this is the best time in the relationship between Televisa and Univision, as between the two will seek to be the global leaders in content in Spanish and take them, with digital platforms, to all corners of the world.
This union will allow the new company to create more content, mainly in Mexico, for its streaming platform.
The merging contents add up to more than 300,000 hours of programming, so it will be the “largest repository of content and intellectual property in Spanish on the planet.”
High value business
Televisa will receive a value of $ 4.8 million for the operation, which places it as the majority shareholder in the new televisa-Univision, acquiring 45% of its shares.
To drive the digital transformation resulting from this merger, SoftBank, Google and The Raine Group, along with investment fund ForgeLight, led by Wade Davis, will allocate millions of dollars to the operation, and join the group of current shareholders made up of ForgeLight itself, Searchlight, Liberty Global and Grup Televisa with Univision.
The two companies have a joint history of more than 60 years and have recently generated profitable and audience business units such as TUDN and Televisa Studios.
Wade Davis will be, after the necessary authorizations, who will be in charge of the new global content company Televisa-Univision.
While Emilio Azcárraga, Bernardo Gómez and Alfonso de Angoitia will form part of the Board of Directors
of Televisa-Univision, al
that of Angoitia he will be the executive president.
“This partnership will allow Televisa to try to regain value. It will be a typical T-MEC company,” said Jorge Fernando Negrete, president of Digital Policy and Law.
The specialist opined that the world of audiovisual content will undergo a major metamorphosis with 5G and companies that are not sufficiently financially leveraged and do not have the capacity to release value and products and services in the digital universe will disappear.
Negrete added that companies are merging, as happened with AT&T and Warner, so Televisa’s reaction is delayed, but it’s good that it is doing so because it has lost value in the last 15 years.
Televisa has stressed that the broadcasting and telecommunications concessionaires remain under the direct administration of Azcárraga Jean’s company.
On the other hand, the Azcárraga family will create a new strategic area, which will be dedicated exclusively to the realization of news, informative and cultural content that will be transmitted through Televisa platforms.