The acquisition of Skylink by the Luxembourg-based M7 Group is significant on a number of levels.
Firstly, it automatically makes the latter the leading provider of DTH services in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, having already bought the platform CS Link, which also serves the two countries, earlier this year.
To call Skylink and CS Link rivals would be something of an exaggeration: the two platforms have a lot of shared history and have had ownership links over the last few years. What is more, they both employ the same 23.5 degrees East orbital slot on Astra and a pre-paid business model.
All this should make merging them into a single operation that much easier.
CS Link and to an even greater degree Skylink are no longer the ‘cheap and cheerful’ operations that most pre-paid platforms start off as. Indeed, the latter’s focus in the last couple of years has been on the provision of HD channels and under M7 Group’s ownership the new entity is likely to grow into a more sophisticated operation.
The deal is also significant in that it makes M7 Group, hitherto an important player in the Benelux countries, also a key one in the CEE marketplace. Despite the large number of DTH platforms in the region, probably only a handful, headed by Russia’s Tricolor TV and Poland’s Cyfrowy Polsat, can claim over 2 million customers.
M7 Group’s acquisition of Skylink will also be unwelcome news for Liberty Global, which earlier this autumn re-launched its UPC Direct operations in the Czech Republic and Slovakia as freeSAT in order to compete more effectively with the likes of Skylink and CS Link.
It will in addition put the RCS&RDS-owned platform Digi, which is present in both countries, under more pressure.
The deal also demonstrates that long-awaited consolidation in the region’s DTH marketplace is finally, though admittedly also slowly, now under way.
It has been at its most obvious in Romania, where Boom TV and AKTA Satelit are now owned by Romtelecom, and may soon be seen in Poland, where TVN’s platform n and TNK are currently up for sale.
