Liberty to offload Virgin Media Ireland

[bkman1990]

If Vodafone become official owners of the VM Ireland channels for the medium term at least; you would have to think what type of medium plan or strategy is to be included for making new content for the Irish broadcasting market. The Irish media landscape is a small sector within the Irish broadcasting industry.

If Vodafone buy the channels from Liberty Global/VM; they could be there to continue the exact same arrangements as to how Virgin Media are currently providing their content to their audience as before.

But to avoid having to broadcast multiple repeats from the ITV content deal across 3 channels. Vodafone may need to consider broadcasting that content along with Irish content by only having 2 FTA channels in place along with keeping the old VM Sports channel to bulk up their IPTV offering. This mean's that they would take off one of their VM old channels off the Irish EPGs so that the content does not get spread too thin across 3 FTA channels.

They then have to improve that content even more by investing their money to create more Irish content. Would that be a difficult challenge for Vodafone to do within the smaller Irish TV market at this time because when VM did that in the past; they were very lazy in their attempts to create Irish content to their audience. They were mainly piggybacking on their 10 year deal for ITV Studios content to mix it up with their Irish content. But the problem is that they were taking too much ITV content to provide it to their audience in the first place. Very small amounts of Irish content were included to make it in any way attractive. Maybe Vodafone could be there now to exhibit a big change to VM's current strategy.

[Rdd]

I don’t think it’s a done deal that it’s Vodafone, or even that there will in the current climate be any deal; only that Vodafone are the most likely of the three mobile networks to partner, if that’s one of their criteria - as the incumbent telco, eir will not be allowed for regulatory reasons to buy VM, and I don’t see Three entering that space.

As always, the criteria that comes above all others is the size of the cheque the prospective buyer is willing to write.

[Ballyboy]

What would be the name for the tv channels?, Vodafone 1 2 & 3?.

[Mr Q]

Does Vodafone own TV assets anywhere else in the world? I'm certainly not an expert in either the media or telecommunications sectors in Ireland -- so there might be some local context that I'm totally missing -- but I can't immediately see what reason Vodafone would have for buying an Irish broadcaster.

[Rdd]

It wouldn’t be the broadcaster they’d be interested in at all - it would be the National fixed line network, the only such network that rivals Openeir, and not having to use Openeir’s network to serve broadband and TV customers in urban areas.

(Yes eir did simply copy BT and Openreach when naming their network division!).

As I say I’m not convinced that, if this sale goes ahead, the content and carriage operations will stay in the same hands. A lot of companies that will be interested in the carriage operation just won’t be interested in becoming the dominant national commercial broadcaster, particularly at a time when US analysts are loudly proclaiming in the wake of the AT&T/WB/Discovery transaction that “convergence is dead”.

[Mr Q]

It wouldn’t be the broadcaster they’d be interested in at all - it would be the National fixed line network, the only such network that rivals Openeir, and not having to use Openeir’s network to serve broadband and TV customers in urban areas.

(Yes eir did simply copy BT and Openreach when naming their network division!).

As I say I’m not convinced that, if this sale goes ahead, the content and carriage operations will stay in the same hands. A lot of companies that will be interested in the carriage operation just won’t be interested in becoming the dominant national commercial broadcaster, particularly at a time when US analysts are loudly proclaiming in the wake of the AT&T/WB/Discovery transaction that “convergence is dead”.

Sorry, yes, now I understand! The infrastructure side could well make sense for Vodafone, if direct ownership were more lucrative than piggybacking off someone else's network.

[bkman1990]

If Vodafone were putting themselves to buy the TV channels from VM Ireland; I would assume that they wouldn't have any short or medium term plans in place to move over to VM's HQ in Ballymount. I actually live about a 15 minute bus ride away from Vodafone Ireland's head office in Dublin. It's located in Central Park; Leopardstown which is near the Sandyford Business District in Dublin 18. Vodafone's corporate office is sandwiched in between the entrance to Leopardstown Park Hospital & The Clayton Hotel.

It's quite a tall building. There is a picture of it here.



What I'm saying here is that if Vodafone Ireland made a formal bid to buy the VMTV channels & studios facilities in Ballymount; once that supposed deal is approved here in Ireland it could involve simply renaming VM Ireland's Studios into a proposed name like Vodafone Studios which would act as a guarantee to maintain a stable footing to keep jobs for the Independent Irish media production sector.

However; buying the broadband business is probably one aspect of VM's service that may make sense in the long run as it does enhance Vodafone's broadband offering even further in Ireland. They would have even more capacity to expand their broadband service by upgrading VM's current superfast broadband infrastructure in the Republic of Ireland to the Vodafone Fibre network.

Although; there are some big negatives that is waning over Vodafone Ireland at the moment that needs vast improvement and that is it's customer service dept. It actually has one of the worst customer service in the country which is nearly as worse as Eir. Their broadband subscriptions are quite expensive for their customers as well. I may be thinking that if Vodafone were to buy any part of VM's business; it could drive up costs more if they upgrade the VM infrastructure to Vodafone Fibre. It could add a lot of extra costs which could be reflected in their customers bills which may not be a good thing for the Irish consumer especially after Ireland slowly comes out of a global pandemic.

[Rdd]

FWIW, the Irish Times thinks a private equity buyer more likely, due to complications with Vodafone’s involvement with Siro, and Three simply not being able to afford the asking price.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/medi...8?mode=amp

[Brekkie]

How does what was TV3 rate in comparison in to RTE1/2?