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Televisa-Univision merger

In further Latin America and Spanish language M&A activity, the two major TV companies Univision and Televisa have agreed to merge. The new company will be known as Televisa-Univision. Televisa already owns 36% of Univision, as part of a partnership which has lasted over 40 years, and this stake will increase to 45%. Televisa will bring $4.8bn of its content production assets to the deal and Spanish language broadcasting company Univision will pay $3bn in cash and a further $1.5bn in shares. Univision operates the Univision and UniMas networks along with 60 TV and 60 radio stations and a new streaming service called PrendeTV. The merged company will reportedly launch its own global streaming offer in 2022. 

Televisa is a major content producer, creating 86,000 hours of TV in 2020 covering news, sport and entertainment. The company will retain some of its Mexico assets outside of the deal to comply with Mexican news ownership regulations. Univision changed hands last year, being sold by one group of investors to another in a deal which valued the company at approx. $9bn.

The two companies expect to achieve significant cost savings from the deal, particularly in content creation, and to compete more effectively with the global streaming networks. The merged company estimates its market is 600m consumers – and is perceived to be underserved by Spanish language operators amid increasing demand from consumers for programming in Spanish across Latin America, hispanic populations in the US and internationally. 

Televisa