DirecTV is purchasing Dish Network, merging the longtime rival services amid the waning demand for satellite television.
The deal, which DirecTV announced on Monday, is expected to merge the services near the end of 2025, Reuters reported. It will become official only if Dish bondholders comply with a net debt of no more than $1.55 billion.
DirecTV will give EchoStar, which owns Dish Network, $1 to inherit roughly $9.75 billion in debt.
Both DirecTV and Dish have floundered as demand has shifted to on-demand streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
The deal comes after decades of speculation that the service providers would merge. Reuters reported that DirecTV and Dish have a combined 20 million subscribers.
“With greater scale, we expect a combined DIRECTV and DISH will be better able to work with programmers to realize our vision for the future of TV, which is to aggregate, curate and distribute content tailored to customers’ interests,” DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow said in a release.
Morrow told Reuters that subscribers will have an easier time finding their preferred shows and will enjoy a simplified subscription management experience.
“We believe that consumers don’t want to be the aggregators — or at least a majority of consumers in the marketplace would not prefer to have to go out and manage all these multiple accounts of those direct-to-consumer (subscription video-on-demand) services,” he said.
The deal will also let AT&T sell its final 70 percent stake in DirecTV to TPG, a Texas-based private equity firm. AT&T purchased DirecTV in 2015 before selling 30 percent of its stake six years later.
–Field Level Media
