[ad_1]
© Tsvetelina Belutova
Florian Scala, CEO of BTV Media Group
Czech billionaire Petr Kellner’s PPF investment group will become owner of 6 TV channels of BTV Media Group in Bulgaria on October 13. The news is contained in a message to the Prague and New York stock exchanges, where the seller, Central European Media Enterprises, is listed.
The company indicates from Bermuda, where it is registered, the date as the time of the expected completion of the transaction, for which they have received all regulatory approvals.
In Bulgaria, Kellner will become the owner of bTV, bTV Cinema, bTV Comedy, bTV Action, bTV Lady and Ring.
Who is Peter Kellner, defined as the richest and probably the most influential man in the Czech Republic, you can read here.
The announcement is unclear whether the deal includes other parts of the Bulgarian media group such as bWeb with 9 sites and trawls, bTV Radio with radio stations bTV Radio, N-JOY, Jazz FM, Classic FM and Z-Rock, as well as the film distributor bTV. Studies. If the deal is for the entire “BTV Media Group,” it will mean everything outside of televisions.
The CEOs of BTV Media Group EAD are Florian Skala, Tonislav Popov and Mr. Yovchev, and according to Dnevnik, which has not been officially confirmed, they will remain in office at least until the end of the year. The same is supposed to apply to those responsible for the main group structures.
-
Kellner buys 30 TV channels from SMEs, including those in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Slovenia. Thus, PPF will take control of the main media groups in countries with a total population of 45 million people. According to the investment group, at the end of 2019 it had assets of almost 49,000 million euros and had 135,000 employees worldwide.
Two years ago, the Czech Republic had a contract to buy BTV’s main competitor, Nova Broadcasting Group. But the Bulgarian Commission for the Protection of Competition refused to allow him to close the deal. On the other hand, it quickly agreed in March 2019 to become the property of Advance Media Group, controlled by Kiril and Georgi Domuschievi. Approval in 2020 came even faster for the group’s addition around Channel 3 to the media ownership of the Domuschievs, whose television stations immediately followed a pro-government policy.
Kellner’s advantage over the two brothers is that he already owns a large telecommunications company. In the summer of 2018, it acquired the telecommunications assets of the Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor in Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Hungary, Montenegro and Serbia). This allows you to distribute content created by BTV Media Group on digital platforms that are becoming increasingly popular with mobile users.
Nova Broadcasting Group is owned by Netinfo, which is said to reach almost 80% of the country’s internet users. But the Domuschiev group does not have a large mobile operator and has to negotiate with the large A1 and Vivacom, and there is business logic for Telenor to give preference to the products of BTV Media Group.
