A multimillion Euro offer from Vivendi to acquire African pay-TV platform MultiChoice has been overruled by its parent company, Naspers.
Naspers is a global internet and entertainment group with investment interest in MultiChoice, OLX, and other businesses.
Vivendi SA (formerly Vivendi Universal SA) on the other hand is a French multinational mass media conglomerate headquartered in Paris. The company has activities in music, television, film, video games, telecommunications, tickets and video hosting service.
According to a report by BFM, French business channel, an approach was made by the Canal+ owner in the past few months.
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Whilst Canal was shedding subscribers in France, the one high-spot was its international platform in French-speaking Africa. A combination with the English MultiChoice would have been the perfect fit.
Rumours of a sale first surfaced in May 2017 after a period in which profits at MultiChoice had come under increasing pressure from cheaper rivals. Any sale would not have featured the lucrative MultiChoice Africa.
MultiChoice covers 48 countries including Nigeria and counts 4.6 million subscribers, 2.6 million by satellite and over 3 million DTT subscribers in 10 countries in the region.
In addition to MultiChoice itself, the company also uses the SuperSport and DStv brands.
SuperSport will be a familiar name to readers in the Benelux and Scandinavia through Canal’s purchase of the FilmNet business inn 1996.
However, neither Naspers nor MultiChoice have commented on the BFM story.
