Big time Bulgaria

Bulgaria appears to have made the transition from a peripheral to highly promising broadcast market in the space of a few short days.

Although the country’s TV industry is in truth much more developed than many would have believe – aside from a public and three commercial national TV stations, it includes two DTH platforms and a large cable sector – those of neighbouring countries such as Romania and Turkey are much larger and therefore considered more lucrative.

What is more, Bulgaria’s TV ad spend, understood be in the region of €125 million in 2007, remains low even by regional standards.

News Corp-backed Balkan News Corporation nevertheless established a presence in Bulgaria as far back as 2000 with the launch of bTV, which has since gone on to become the country’s leading broadcaster. However, as part of a major change in strategy in CEE, it has recently decided to put the station up for sale for around $800 million (€513.4 million).

There is unlikely to be any shortage of prospective buyers, and earlier this week a news agency reported that the investment funds Advent International, GMT Communications Partners and Warburg Pincus have already expressed an interest. CME has also been mooted as a possible buyer, but it moved into Bulgaria through an altogether different route earlier this week, acquiring majority stakes in both the national commercial channel TV2 and sports cable channel Ring TV.

To make matters even more interesting, MTG, which has had a presence in Bulgaria since buying a 50% stake in the TV channel operator Balkan Media Group Limited in Q1 2007, has now announced the acquisition of the national commercial station Nova TV.

What made the sale particularly surprising was that the Greek Antenna Group, Nova TV’s previous owner, was understood to be interested in selling only 30% of in the station. Instead, it sold 100% for a pretty hefty €620 million.

Bulgaria’s broadcast market may still has a lot of catching up to do, but with CME and MTG now going head-to-head with the future owners (whoever they may be) of the market leader bTV, interesting times certainly lie ahead.