DirecTV<\/b>\u2019s deal to acquire Dish Network<\/b> from EchoStar is off after Dish debt holders did not agree to a debt offer from EchoStar<\/b>. <\/p>\n
DirecTV announced Nov. 21 that it would terminate the deal after the debt offer was not accepted. Dish debt holders reaching an agreement was a condition of DirecTV\u2019s obligations to acquire Dish under the deal announced in September. <\/p>\n
The deal between the two main satellite TV providers in the U.S. falls apart after the companies have been rumored to merge for years. A merger deal was blocked in 2001 over anti-trust concerns. <\/p>\n
DirecTV and Dish said the merger would create a company better equipped to compete against streaming services and result in better negotiations over content. Collectively, the two companies have lost 63% of their satellite subscribers since 2016, as traditional pay TV penetration has fallen to less than 50% of U.S. households. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we believed a combination of DirecTV and Dish would have benefitted all stakeholders, we have terminated the transaction because [the terms] were necessary to protect DirecTV\u2019s balance sheet and our operational flexibility,\u201d said Bill Morrow, CEO of DirecTV. <\/p>\n
This does not impact private equity firm TPG acquiring 70% of Dish in a move to own the whole company. TPG acquired 30% of Dish from AT&T in 2021 and is now acquiring the remaining share. That deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025.<\/p>\n
This will impact EchoStar\u2019s plans to refocus the company on mobile and satellite solutions, the other parts of its portfolio. Currently, pay-TV makes up about 67% of EchoStar\u2019s revenue. <\/p>\n
After Dish bondholders reportedly rejected a deal earlier this month, EchoStar assured investors that the company has a path forward if the acquisition did not close, after recent transactions that improved its capital and debt maturity profile.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the exchange does not close successfully, we\u2019ll continue to operate our business,\u201d CEO Hamid Akhavan told investors on Nov. 12. \u201cOur Dish business has been [the] primary business of this institution, and we continue to operate it as we have always have. \u2026 Whether the transaction closes or not, we do have a path forward now with the cash available to us from other sources. \u2026 We certainly can develop the business regardless of the developments that happen at [Dish].\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DirecTV\u2019s deal to acquire Dish Network from EchoStar is off after Dish debt holders did not agree to a debt offer from EchoStar. DirecTV announced Nov. 21 that it would terminate the deal after the debt offer was not accepted. Dish debt holders reaching an agreement was a condition of DirecTV\u2019s obligations to acquire Dish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}