Increased competition and the decision not to renew unprofitable football rights had a detrimental effect on Vodafone in Spain in the half ending September 30.
In its latest set of results, the company notes that it lost 98,000 TV customers in the country during the period, adding that “going forward, unless football rights are available on profitable terms, we intend to focus our content strategy on premium movies and TV series”.
Meanwhile in Germany, the company notes that it added 513,000 consumer customers in H1, bringing the total to 1.2 million. Furthermore, its Gigabit investment plan is well under way, with ASO completed for 42% of its TV customers, enabling the efficient rollout of DOCSIS 3.1.
Vodafone is now aiming to cover 8 million households (70%) in Germany with Gigabit capable technology by the end of the year.
Elsewhere, its VodafoneZiggo joint venture reached the milestone of 1 million converged customers in H1.
Within Europe, Vodafone, including VodafoneZiggo, had 20.4 million broadband, 6.2 million converged and 13.7 million customers at the end of September. It added 384,000 broadband, 744,000 NGN and 616,000 converged customers, but saw its TV base decline by 71,000 due to its losses in Spain.
Vodafone Group as a whole had revenues of €21.8 billion and a loss of €7.8 billion in the half ending September 30.
