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SWEDEN

Germany’s ProSiebenSat1 sells unit to Sweden’s TV4

German media group ProSiebenSat1 is to sell Scandinavian pay TV unit C More to the Swedish company TV4, ProSieben said Monday.

Published: 16 June 2008 15:38 CEST

The €320 million deal is subject to regulatory approval, a statement said.

Several months ago ProSiebenSat1 announced it would sell some of its units to reduce debt.

“Free television is our core activity. That is why the sale of C More fits our strategy,” boss Patrick Tillieux said in a statement.

C More was part of the package acquired as part of the purchase of SBS. TV4 belongs to the family-owned Bonnier Group.

The move means that TV4 will acquire Canal Plus, which owns the broadcasting rights to a wide range of films and sporting events and is strongly placed on the market.

Canal Plus owns the rights to the English Premier League, Italy’s Serie A, the NHL ice hockey league as well as Sweden’s top football and ice hockey leagues.

The company also has broadcasting agreements with the vast majority of American and Nordic film companies.

“We are now establishing ourselves for the first time within the premium pay TV sector, a market that hes been developing broad distribution and strong growth for a number of years,” said TV4 CEO Jan Scherman in a statement.

Scherman believes the acquisition of C More Entertainment will reduce TV4’s reliance on advertising revenue.

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BUSINESS

Google News to return to Spain after seven-year spat

Google announced Wednesday the reopening of its news service in Spain next year after the country amended a law that imposed fees on aggregators such as the US tech giant for using publishers’ content.

Published: 4 November 2021 10:15 CET
Google News to return to Spain after seven-year spat
Google argues its news site drives readers to Spanish newspaper and magazine websites and thus helps them generate advertising revenue.Photo: Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD / AFP

The service closed in Spain in December 2014 after legislation passed requiring web platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay publishers to reproduce content from other websites, including links to their articles that describe a story’s content.

But on Tuesday the Spanish government approved a European Union copyright law that allows third-party online news platforms to negotiate directly with content providers regarding fees.

This means Google no longer has to pay a fee to Spain’s entire media industry and can instead negotiate fees with individual publishers.

Writing in a company blog post on Wednesday, Google Spain country manager Fuencisla Clemares welcomed the government move and announced that as a result “Google News will soon be available once again in Spain”.

“The new copyright law allows Spanish media outlets — big and small — to make their own decisions about how their content can be discovered and how they want to make money with that content,” she added.

“Over the coming months, we will be working with publishers to reach agreements which cover their rights under the new law.”

News outlets struggling with dwindling print subscriptions have long seethed at the failure of Google particularly to pay them a cut of the millions it makes from ads displayed alongside news stories.

Google argues its news site drives readers to newspaper and magazine websites and thus helps them generate advertising revenue and find new subscribers.

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