Altice had made of the convergence between media and telecommunications are the alpha and the omega of his development. This strategy has recently been seriously tarnished : the group of telecom, owned by Patrick Drahi, which belongs to SFR in France, announced, Monday, June 18, the stop of the ongoing negotiations with the Spanish Prisa and the competition authority the Portuguese to buy Media Capital.
There is a little less than a year, Altice, which owns the historic Portuguese operator Portugal Telecom, became Altice Portugal, announced that the want to buy to Prisa 94,7 % of Media Capital to 440 million euros, with the project to resume 100 % of the share capital of the group of Portuguese media.
Media Capital owns the largest chain of private, local, ITV, and channels (TVI24, TVI Ficçao, TVI express Reality TVI Internacional and TVI Africa), accessible in 22 countries. All in all, the network TVI displays a daily audience average of 21 % of the market, with a peak of 25 % for the prime time. The group, which completed in 2017 revenue of $ 165.5 million euros, and a profit of 19.7 million euro, also holds the powerful radio Portuguese Radio Comercial.
A small earthquake in Portugal
In Portugal, this change of hand had created a small earthquake, as it was left to the fate of the first telecoms operator in the country with the first group of media local. As if, in France, Orange is married with TF1 and RTL at the same time.
Competitors of Portugal Telecom, Vodafone and the cable operator, OUR, unfortunate candidates a year prior to the takeover of the media group, were wind standing against this operation. But it is the competition authority the Portuguese who put sticks in the wheels of Altice. For the past six months, she claimed the operator of the ” remedies “, in other words, concessions to protect competition.
Altice had accepted a number of them, such as the passage of…
