Could Sky fall to Vodafone?

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adonis1

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The market is full of rumours that this or that that telephony operator wants to buy, merge or somehow absorb a rival or two, especially if that rival has TV-related assets.

Widely talked about are discussions between Vodafone and Liberty Global’s European operations. BT (the former British Telecom, and which used to own cellular operator O2) is looking to buy O2 back from Telefonica. If this doesn’t happen, the rumour mill suggests that BT might instead buy EE.

Meanwhile, other rumours suggest a Vodafone move on TalkTalk.

And while these rumours might resolve themselves over the next few days, it is a recognised fact that ‘quad-play’ is still the name of the game, and where a successful business needs cellular, broadband, land-line and TV if it is to retain customer loyalty and grow.

There are plenty of real-world examples of such M&A activity, whether from Numericable’s take-over of SFR, or Telefonica Deutschland’s €3.2 billion share issue to fund its acquisition of E-Plus, or Comcast’s purchase of NBCUniversal, or the current hot-scheme where AT&T is bidding for DirecTV.

Sky (whether in its ‘UK’ version, or enlarged ‘Sky Europe’ entity), has been frequently mentioned as a potential target is some of these rumours. Sky has a strong position in the UK, although it is much less influential in Germany or Italy. Nevertheless, Sky has an excellent reputation in TV aggregation and sports ‘rights’ as well as TV production, and cannot be immune from these discussions.

Sky could fall to a take-over from cellular giant Vodafone. The rationale is simple: Vodafone wants a quad-play offering, and is missing pay-TV in its portfolio of services. Moreover Vodafone has the cash, the muscle, the borrowing power and associated strengths in terms of managing a triple-play offering.

The received wisdom is that a sale of O2 back to BT might well take place, with Telefonica possibly retaining a 20 per cent stake in BT’s then enlarged and transferred business.

This move could start a ‘domino effect’ of M&A activity, and the investment bankers are opening their books to a flood of potential fees with all manner of permutations cited as making sense. And one such theory is that Sky lacks a cellular division, while Vodafone lacks a pay-TV offering: ‘Hey Presto’ as the City magicians might exclaim, and it is a marriage made in heaven!

Those who question the logic behind all or any of these rumours is to ask whether there are true synergies between content production and distribution. Besides, what if Alibaba’s billions were to enter the TV distribution market, or Facebook, or Amazon? Each has billions of dollars in terms of potential buying power. We can discount Google from this scenario because Brussels seems not to like the company!

The next few weeks promise to be fun.

advanced-television.com
 
I can't see Sky and Vodafone merging, but then I never thought BSB and Sky would merge either so what do I know... :oops:
 
So if vodafone takes over sky, then will they start paying their taxes here in the UK? Probably not... :-rofl2
 
I wish them both the worst of luck
 
Its ironic that this involves two of the UKs biggest rip of merchants, this can't be a good thing. When i was looking for a new phone i checked all the operators out and Vodafone were definitely the most expensive out of the big five.

I went with 3 in the end. I also have a Sainsburys PAYG sim for when i'm in Canada as its the cheapest one for Roaming.

Nano
 
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Seems almost fantasy when you consider the size of sky, where would Vodaphone get the money from?
 
nano said:
When i was looking for a new phone i checked all the operators out and Vodafone were definitely the most expensive out of the big five.
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I got my Samsung Galaxy Tab via vodafone, and I paid a lot more than its worth for the thing, and I got the poorest service over their network (even in Newcastle with full signal, I'd get about 3 seconds of browsing and then it'd drop to 2G data and that was it), terrible quality network, wouldn't get anything from them again, glad I told them to GTFO and transferred my GT's SIM number over to Three, at least they supply a constant and reliable signal... :rolleyes:

Still, if they did merge with/take over sky, I wouldn't notice any changes, don't want sky, don't want vodafone, problem solved... :-rofl2
 
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Sky + Vodaphone

they have to call the merged company SKODAPHONE :-lmao
 
Hey....I drive a Skoda and I have a phone....
 
Hopefully not at the same time... o_O
 
Certainly not....tbh people using a hand held phone whilst driving is one of my real pet hates. Having been a motorcyclist for so many years (no longer though) I see too many distractions for drivers without mobile phones.
 
excollier said:
Certainly not....tbh people using a hand held phone whilst driving is one of my real pet hates. Having been a motorcyclist for so many years (no longer though) I see too many distractions for drivers without mobile phones.
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I can't remember if I've posted this here before or not but the stupidity of it still has me giggling

I was recently a visitor to Lahore, Pakistan and I witnessed 5 up on a Honda CG125, ok, maybe that`s the done thing there and wouldn't cause much shock but what got me was there was 5 on the motorbike and the driver/rider was sending an SMS/Text message while driving/riding down the road! :eek:
 
Sounds like evolution in action, they crash and that's 5 not-smart people out of the genepool... :-rofl2
 
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