The largest Russian media holding decided to let the company “NTV-Plus” engaged in activities just relative to satellite pay-TV broadcasting.
According to the news agency RNS quoting the company’s spokesman Alexei Prokhorov, the sports TV channels pass from now to the jurisdiction of “Match TV”, “Gazprom-Media”’s subsidiary, and the film production with TV channels’ distribution pass to the company Red Media. As far back as one year ago, the media called Mikhail Lesin, CEO at the media holding of “Gazprom” in 2013-2015, the author of the idea of dividing the NTV PLUS’s activities between three companies. He suggested the “NTV-Plus” would have retain satellite TV broadcasting functions, thus transfering the sports channels, creation and distribution of cinema content to other companies.
After the reorganization, the company “Match TV” incorporates the eponymous TV channel and another eleven TV channels dedicated to sports. These are 4 football channels broadcasting Russian, Spanish, British championships and games of other European countries, the TV channel dedicated to ice-hockey (“KHL TV”), “Horse World”, “Boets TV” (to be called “Match! Boets” (Fighter)) “Match! Nash Sport” (Our Sport), “Match! Igra” (Game), “Match! Arena” and “Match! Planeta” (Planet), designed for audiences in the CIS countries.
As a result, the company Red Media obtained 5 movie channels (“Nashe novoye kino” (Our New Cinema), “Kinoklub” (Cinema Society), “Nashe kino” (Our Cinema), “Premiera” (Premiere), “Kinohit” (Blockbuster)), as well as the distribution rights. Thus, the company actually holds eighteen TV channels and deals with distributing thirty three channels of the “Gazprom-Media” Corporation.
The holding reasoned restructuring by the desire to save money of the “NTV-PLUS”, previously spent on purchasing sports events broadcasting licenses.
