It’s the birth of a new streaming Goliath. The Mexican Televisa and the American Univision announced, Tuesday, April 13, their merger to create the world’s largest media group in Spanish. Objective: to launch a video-on-demand platform targeting the 600 million Spanish speakers to compete with the domination of Netflix, which is investing heavily in a high-potential Latin market.
The merger has yet to be validated by the Mexican and American regulatory authorities. But the engagement is sealed. The marriage should be formalized before the end of the year. With its 31 channels (four free-to-air and 27 pay-per-view) and its streaming platform, Blim, the Mexican group is already the world’s leading producer of audiovisual content in the language of Cervantes.
Its American counterpart (60 local television stations and the digital service Prende TV) is the leader among the Latina community in the United States (61 million people). Their union covers free-to-air or pay, television or digital broadcasts. The new company, Televisa-Univision, will hold the largest Spanish-speaking catalog in the world (three hundred thousand hours of programming), eventually anticipating sales of more than $ 4 billion (3.3 billion euros) per year. .
A new heavyweight
The deal provides that “Televisa will receive $ 4.8 billion, becoming the majority shareholder of the new company, with 45% of the shares”, specifies the press release published Tuesday. For its part, Univision agrees to pay this sum in cash and shares to the titan Televisa, whose dowry represents several billion dollars in sports rights and original productions.
In addition, the wedding is sponsored by internet giant Google, Japanese tech fund SoftBank, US investment bank The Raine Group, and investment fund Forgelight (shareholder of Univision), which plan to invest a total of $ 1 billion.
Enough to create a new heavyweight in the streaming market, dominated by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney +. In 2020, they had 200, 150 and 94 million subscribers respectively worldwide. Boosted by the containments caused by the pandemic, the sector accumulated, last year, 72 billion dollars in revenue, according to Global X ETF. A pioneer privilege, Netflix has the lion’s share with $ 25 billion in revenue, up 24% in one year.
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