Televisa and Univisión completed the transaction to create “TelevisaUnivision”, a content and media streaming platform in Spanish, which they plan to launch in the middle of this year.
TelevisaUnivision will have 300,000 hours of content, as well as sports and news in Spanish, will also produce and deliver premium content for its own and other platforms, and will seek to provide solutions for advertisers and distributors globally.
“The closing of our transaction marks a historic moment for our company and our industry. “We are combining two iconic and market-leading companies that have a great shared history and an incredible portfolio of assets. This combination will create a business unlike any other on the global media scene”; Wade Davis, CEO of TelevisaUnivision, said in a statement.
The announcement of the merger of the content companies was reported on April 13 of last year, and in September 2021 the Federal Telecommunications Institute endorsed its concentration. On January 24 of this year, US regulatory authorities also approved their merger.
The companies will seek to capture the attention of 600 million Spanish-speaking users globally, which represents a total GDP of approximately 7 billion dollars.
Earlier today, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assured that the merger of the companies would leave approximately 15,000 million pesos in taxes for Mexico.
On the other hand, the merger of the companies will bring together Televisa’s four open television channels, the 27 pay TV channels, the Videocine movie studio, the Blim TV video-on-demand service and the Televisa brand, as well as the channels Univision and UniMás. Also nine cable channels in Spanish, 59 television stations and 57 radio stations in the main Hispanic markets in the United States and its PrendeTV streaming service.
The TelevisaUnivision Board will be made up of Emilio Azcárraga, Bernardo Gómez, Michel Combes, Gisel Ruiz, Oscar Muñoz, María Cristina “MC” González Noguera, Eric Zinterhofer and Jeff Sine.
Content production and operations in Mexico will be headed by Bernardo Gómez and Alfonso de Angoitia, Executive Co-Presidents of TelevisaUnivision México, who also continue to be Executive Co-Presidents of Grupo Televisa.
Meanwhile, Grupo Televisa’s news operations in Mexico will become part of a new independent company dedicated to producing news for TelevisaUnivision’s channels in Mexico, and will be headed by Emilio Azcárraga, Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of Grupo Televisa. The Company’s new investors include SoftBank Latin America Fund, Google and The Raine Group.
