Grupo Televisa and Univision Holdings Inc. will join forces to compete in streaming, a company dominated by Netflix.
The two companies agreed to merge their content assets to use their streaming platform in the market.
“Televisa-Univision will have a strategic vision of its digital transformation to conquer the streaming market in Spanish, for which it will launch a joint platform with a potential market of 600 million people speaking that language, of which 128 million are Mexican and 61 million. Hispanics in the United States, ”he explained in a statement.
Televisa-Univision will achieve combined sales of $ 4 billion and EBITDA of $ 1.6 billion, with a margin of more than 40% post-synergy thanks to the integration, he added.
“Combining the Televisa and Univision content assets was a dream that had not been consolidated. Up to 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 the rest of the world. We will be a global company, ”said Emilio Azcárraga Jean, Executive Chairman of Televisa’s Board of Directors.
Azcárraga stressed that this is the best moment in the relationship between Televisa and Univision as they will try together to be the world leaders of content in Spanish and take them to all corners of the world with digital platforms.
This union allows the new company to create a greater amount of content, mainly in Mexico, for its streaming platform.
The content that will be aggregated amounts to more than 300,000 programming hours, so it will be the “largest repository of content and intellectual property in Spanish in the world”.
High-quality business
Televisa will receive $ 4.8 billion worth of the operation, making it the majority shareholder of the new Televisa-Univision and 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 $ 1 billion to the operation and join the group of current shareholders who consists of ForgeLight. , Searchlight, Liberty Global and Grupo Televisa with Univision.
The two companies have a combined history of more than 60 years and have recently generated profitable business units with audiences like TUDN and Televisa Studios.
Wade Davis will, with the necessary authorizations, lead the new global content company Televisa-Univision.
While Emilio Azcárraga, Bernardo Gómez and Alfonso de Angoitia will be part of the Board of Directors
of Televisa-Univision, in the
that of Angoitia will be the Executive President.
“Through this association, Televisa can try to regain value. It will be a typical T-MEC company, ”said Jorge Fernando Negrete, president of Digital Policy and Law.
The specialist believed that the world of audiovisual content will undergo a greater metamorphosis with 5G and that companies that lack financial leverage and the ability to release value and products and services will disappear in the digital universe.
Negrete added that the companies are merging, as has happened with AT&T and Warner, so Televisa’s response is late, but it’s a good thing it is doing so as it has lost value over the past 15 years.
Televisa emphasized that the radio broadcasting and telecommunications concessionaires remain under the direct management of the Azcárraga Jean company.
On the other hand, the Azcárraga family will create a new strategic area dedicated exclusively to the production of news, informational and cultural content that will be broadcast through Televisa platforms.