The holding “1+1 media” is preparing to enter the satellite pay-TV market.
“1+1 media”, the media group owned by oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, is going to close a deal with the Swedish holding Modern Times Group (MTG). The matter of the deal, according to the edition “LIGABusinessInform”, will reside in buying the company “Vision TV”, which owns the license for providing satellite TV content services (license HP № 0183-p issued by the National TV and Radio Broadcasting Council of Ukraine in May 2007) and which controls the operation of the DTH-platform “Viasat Ukraine”.
The representatives of the “1+1 media” and the “Viasat Ukraine” declined to comment on the information about the agreement, but under the estimates of some industry experts, the deal value may range from USD 15 to 20 million.
The “Viasat Ukraine”’s services are enjoyed by near 150 thousand subscribers. At the end of last year, the “Viasat” along with the telecommunications operator “Kyivstar” launched the Internet TV service “Home TV”.
It is worth pointing out that the sale of the “Viasat Ukraine”’s assets is quite an expected step, as not so long ago the Swedish media holding MTG announced its desire to leave its business in the Eastern European market. In particular, at the end of October last year, the MTG found a buyer for its Russian assets, represented by the company “Synergy” owned by Anatoly E. Karyakin. Later on, that asset became interesting for the “National Media Group” (NMG), which obtained the approval of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) to acquire the company “Synergy” LTD, i.e. a group of the Viasat’s Russian pay-TV channels.
We shall recall that in the past year, it was closed a deal on the Ukrainian satellite TV market between the “Media Group Ukraine” and the Istil Group, which resulted in passing the DTH-platform Xtra TV under the wing of Rinat Akhmetov’s media holding. Thus, today in Ukraine, two of the three (Xtra TV and “Viasat Ukraine”) satellite operators in the market were incorporated into the large Ukrainian TV holdings. The third provider “NTV-PLUS Ukraine”, administered by the company “New Television Technologies” and the official partner of the Russian TV company “NTV-PLUS” (owned by the “Gazprom-Media”), has recently lost its popularity due to a number of unsuccessful marketing ploys and political situation, but it still continues its activities.
We shall recall that it is a real challenging task to operate on the satellite pay-TV market, as evidenced by unsuccessful launches of the DTH-platforms like “Poverkhnost+”, “My TV” and “Lybid TV”.
