History of Premiere AG
In the following, the company history of the pay TV broadcaster Premiere is described, which is now known as Sky Deutschland or Sky for short after several changes of name and ownership .
Foundation as a premiere
Premiere emerged in 1990 from the German business of the Swiss-based pay-TV broadcaster Teleclub . It started broadcasting on February 28, 1991. At that time, the owners were the Kirch Group , Bertelsmann AG and Canal Plus . The premiere program in the early days consisted of current films that had not yet been shown on free-to-air television , live sports (from 1991 a top Bundesliga game every week and from the 2000/2001 season all Bundesliga games, as well as boxing, tennis, Golf and ice hockey), documentaries and concerts. At that time, advertising was generally not shown, not even with unencrypted broadcasts. In order to make the program known, some in-house productions such as Zapping , the talk magazine " 0137 " (with Sandra Maischberger and Roger Willemsen, who was still relatively unknown at the time ) and Kalkofes Mattscheibe , a cinema magazine and the premiere preview were shown unencrypted. In addition, there were also unencrypted “trial days”.
Until Premiere digital was founded (1997), the Premiere offer consisted of just a single program that was broadcast analogue via cable and satellite . The analog decoder used by Premiere, an F Sagem Syster G1 decoder from this period, was identical to that of Canal + , the "white key" that you had to put into the decoder to decode the program was striking.
Despite a high level of awareness and popularity (through the Bundesliga broadcasts known from pubs and the free programs), Premiere was never able to reach the targeted seven-digit number of subscribers and remained in the red.
Competition from DF1
Leo Kirch , the strong man behind the Kirch Group, tried early on to buy out his co-shareholders from Premiere and take over the station on his own. When this did not succeed, he founded DF1, a direct competitor to Premiere. In contrast to Premiere, DF1 only broadcast digitally and consisted of many specialty television programs that were founded specifically for this platform and were mostly fed from the extensive Kirch film archive and the Kirch sports rights. With its quantity of programs, DF1 Premiere could not, however, ditch the water; the premiere program was much smaller, but more top-class (Bundesliga, UEFA Champions League , current films). In his distress, Kirch even imposed a film embargo on Premiere, but this did not help to bring DF1 forward, nor did the Formula 1 rights, which were held by DF1 but were relatively unattractive due to the parallel broadcast on RTL .
Sale to the Kirch Group
In 1997, Premiere launched its digital offering, Premiere digital , with which the program was expanded from one analogue channel to three digital channels. Since Canal plus had previously left Premiere, Bertelsmann and the Kirch Group now shared the shares. The two shareholders planned to operate DF-1 and Premiere together. In May 1998 the EU Commission rejected this merger for reasons of competition law. Finally, Bertelsmann AG sold its shares in the pay TV broadcaster in March 1999 to the Kirch Group (except for a remaining share of five percent, which the group held until 2001). The Kirch Group now operated both Premiere and DF1 almost single-handedly.
Merger with DF1 to create Premiere World
In 1999 the KirchPayTV Holding was founded through restructuring within the Kirch Group . Premiere merged with competitor DF1 to form Premiere World . Premiere World only took over the name, subscriber base and television rights from the old Premiere; structurally, it was a takeover of Premiere by DF1, as the DF1 program came from the old DF1 broadcasting center in Unterföhring, like DF1 was structured in special interest channels - the broadcasters were largely taken over by DF1 - and with Kirch the old DF1 shareholder belonged to.
Despite extensive advertising campaigns and frequent changes to the range, Premiere World was unable to increase its number of subscribers substantially and, like the two predecessor companies, remained deep in the red. The high losses of Premiere World were one of the main reasons for the insolvency of the entire Kirch Group in 2002. As before, the d-box was available as a set-top box as a rental and purchase device with DF1 .
Kirch bankruptcy
In February 2002, just before the bankruptcy of the Kirch group , took over Georg Kofler , the management of Premiere World and named as one of its first acts, the company back into Premiere to. In May 2002, KirchPayTV-Holding, the direct shareholder of Premiere, had to file for bankruptcy, which was averted in July with the help of Bayerische Landesbank and HypoVereinsbank . Until the Kirch Group's insolvency, its compensation payments had kept Premiere alive. The bankruptcy of Premiere itself could only barely be prevented.
Rescue by Permira
Premiere analogue was distributed in parallel up to March 1, 2003, but then switched off for good because the distribution method was no longer up-to-date and the "Syster Nagravision" encryption system used had been compromised for a long time. The complex network of the Kirch group and the negative balance initially deterred potential investors. Only when it had been ensured that there were no more claims against Premiere from other Kirch companies was Premiere able to present its new shareholder structure in March 2003: the Permira investor group took over 64.1 percent, Bayerische Landesbank and HypoVereinsbank 10 percent each. the BAWAG PSK 3.5 percent of the shares. The remaining shares were acquired by Georg Kofler's management itself.
In August 2003 Georg Kofler took over a further 10.37 percent of the shares in Permira , increasing his stake to 20.46 percent. Kofler prescribed strict austerity measures for the company, allowed numerous sports and film rights and, above all, contracts for special interest programs to expire under the motto "class instead of mass", and concentrated the program offer largely on marketable highlights such as the Bundesliga and current feature films. Also were commercial breaks introduced. The number of programs has been significantly reduced. Numerous holdings that were not part of the direct program business, such as the sale of receivers, were also sold. This made it possible - contrary to the prophecies of doom of many observers - to bring Premiere into the black .
After Premiere concentrated on its core business and withdrew from the hardware business, Georg Kofler was able to bring Premiere back into the black for the third quarter of 2004 for the first time with net income of 15.4 million euros. At the same time the limit of 3 million subscribers was exceeded.
initial public offering
The share capital of Premiere AG at the time of the IPO in March 2005 was 70 million euros. It is divided into 70 million registered shares. The shares are listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The issue price of the share was 28 euros. As a result, Premiere and its existing shareholders were able to generate around 1.2 billion euros. The IPO was oversubscribed twelve times. A total of 42.1 million shares and a greenshoe of 5.5 million shares were placed. Of the Premiere shares on offer, 70 percent went to institutional investors such as investment funds and 30 percent to private investors. Premiere subscribers received 75 percent of their subscribed papers, the other private investors 42 percent. The free float is thus over 50 percent. The majority of the issue volume went to existing shareholders such as the venture capital company Permira and CEO Georg Kofler. 308 million euros remained in the company. Above all, this reduced net debt from 370 to less than 100 million euros.
The battle for the Bundesliga
On December 21, 2005, Premiere lost the tender for the pay-TV rights to the Bundesliga for three seasons from the 2006/2007 season onwards to the consortium Arena , because Premiere was not ready for an earlier broadcast on free TV 250 as required by the DFL Million euros to be paid. The premiere offered for this model was only 15,000 euros. On that day, the Premiere share lost over 40 percent of its value.
On May 19, 2006, Premiere and Deutsche Telekom announced that they would be broadcasting the Bundesliga via IPTV from the 2006/2007 season. Three million viewers should be able to receive the new service. At the time, the reception of the Bundesliga was only possible via VDSL in selected cities.
Due to the lack of nationwide distribution contracts in the cable network, Premiere was able to announce on July 13, 2006 that it would distribute the Arena program and thus the live broadcasts of the Bundesliga in the cable networks.
On February 8, 2007, Premiere entered into an extensive marketing and sales cooperation with its competitor Arena, which now allows Premiere to once again offer the Bundesliga to its customers throughout Germany via satellite and in most of the cable network (with the exception of ish NRW and iesy Hessen ) to offer. This boosted Premiere's share price. On April 18, 2007, Premiere stopped marketing Arena for an indefinite period at the request of the Cartel Office. After completing the audit, however, the Bundeskartellamt came to the conclusion that it would be able to tolerate this cooperation at least for a limited period until June 30, 2009, so that no further obstacles stood in the way of the cooperation between Premiere and Arena up to this point.
Arena finally announced in mid-July 2007 that it wanted to get out of the deficit Bundesliga business and sell its Bundesliga rights to Premiere for the 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 seasons. For this, Arena will receive a total of 200 million euros in cash, as well as a share package over 17 percent in Premiere.
Further development
In November 2005 three HDTV programs were introduced, two of which (sports and film) have now been merged into one program.
On August 1, 2006, Premiere changed its product and price structure. a. resulted from the loss of the Bundesliga. Since then, each program package can be booked individually. The previous entry-level channel, Premiere Start , has not been re-subscribed to and should be discontinued in 2007.
On February 9, 2007, Premiere started a new marketing campaign in which a new corporate identity is gradually being introduced, including a change in the logo and corporate colors.
On March 13, 2007, Premiere announced that a new program package called Premiere Sky should start on September 1, 2007 . This package should only be distributed via satellite and serve as a platform for small pay TV channels that do not have their own marketing structure. This was seen in the industry as a counter offer to offers represented in the cable network such as tividi (today: Unitymedia ) and Kabel Digital Home . Wolfram Winter, co-founder and head of Stargate , a planned pay TV platform via digital platform entavio, was appointed as managing director of the newly founded Premiere Sky GmbH . With a judgment of June 5, 2007, Premiere is no longer allowed to use the name Premiere Sky , as the British pay TV provider BSkyB , which owns the naming rights to Sky for the European market, had sued for an omission. On June 29, 2007, Premiere changed the name of the package available since September 2007 to Premiere Star . The Premiere Star GmbH operated from 2007 to the launch of the new Sky Germany offer its own transmitter platform within the Premiere offering. Digital satellite programs were to be marketed through Premiere Star GmbH together with Entavio AG, operator of the Astra satellites. In contrast to the Premiere regular offer, Premiere Star and its follow-up offer "Sky Welt Extra" integrated into Sky can only be received via satellite. In addition, Premiere does not claim any exclusivity in Germany for the programs on this platform, while the programs purchased from the Premiere regular offer in Germany and Austria can mostly only be received via Premiere.
After Georg Kofler's resignation , from September 1st, 2007 to September 1st. next year Michael Börnicke new CEO of Premiere AG. He is succeeded by Mark Williams, who left the company on March 31, 2010. Since June 25, 2015, Carsten Schmidt has been the new CEO of Sky Deutschland.
On October 2, 2008, after the stock market closed, Premiere published an ad hoc announcement that after the customer database had been cleaned up, the number of active (= paying) subscriptions would have to be reduced by almost one million. As a result, the share in the M-DAX lost around half of its value and was now only listed at five euros.
Renamed to Sky
On July 4, 2009, the Premiere brand was transferred to Sky and thus disappeared from the German and Austrian markets. Shortly thereafter, Premiere AG was renamed Sky Deutschland AG .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cartel Office approves football monopoly
- ^ Sie : Premiere: Internal report reveals subscription tricks. In: Focus Online . October 4, 2008, accessed October 14, 2018 .