Sales 2023: €3.852 billion

Overview

ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE was founded in 2000 from the merger of ProSieben Media AG and Sat.1 GmbH. The group operates in three segments: Entertainment (the company's core business with 15 free and pay TV channels), Commerce & Ventures (digital commerce companies), and Dating & Video (ParshipMeet Group).

General Information

Headquarters
Medienallee 7
85774 Unterföhring
Germany
Telephone: 0049 89 9507-10
website: prosiebensat1.de 

Branches of trade: TV channels, TV production, e-commerce, dating platforms
Legal form: Stock Company
Financial year: 01.01. – 31.12.
Founding year: 1984 (Sat.1), 1989 (ProSieben), 2000 (ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG), 2015 (ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE)

Basic economic data (amounts in million €)

	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019	2018
Revenue	3.852	4.163	4.494	4.047	4.135	4.009
Operating result (EBIT)	(87)	236	552	553	578	384
Share price (in €, year-end)	5,56	8,35	14,01	13,76	13,63	14,55
Employees	7.188	7.284	7.906	7.307	7.253	6.583

Executives and Directors

Board:

• Bert Habets, Chairman of the Board (since November 1, 2022)
• Wolfgang Link, Board Member, Entertainment
• Christine Scheffler, Board Member, HR, Compliance & Sustainability
• Ralf Peter Gierig, Member of the Board of Management & Chief Financial Officer

Supervisory Board:

• Dr. Andreas Wiele
• Dr. Marion Helmes
• Lawrence A. Aidem
• Erik Huggers
• Marjorie Kaplan
• Ketan Mehta
• Dr. Antonella Mei-Pochtler
• Prof. Dr. Rolf Nonnenmacher

History

Initially, the group was part of the Kirch empire. Film dealer Leo Kirch (1926-2011) initiated the merger of the broadcasters Sat.1 and ProSieben in October 2000 – previously, concentration rules had not permitted this. Therefore, his son Thomas Kirch officially headed ProSieben for a long time. As part of the merger, Axel Springer AG acquired an 11.5 percent stake in the new ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG. Springer had previously held a stake in Sat.1; Kirch, in turn, held a 40 percent stake in Springer AG. After doubts about Kirch's solvency arose in 2001, Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner sold his ProSiebenSat.1 stake for €790 million. He speculated that he would receive the entire broadcasting group in the event of insolvency. But things turned out differently. 

Kirch was forced to file for insolvency in April 2002 due to excessive debt, and the group was broken up. During the negotiations, many large media companies were considered as potential buyers, including Sony, TF1, Bauer Publishing, the WAZ Group, and Rupert Murdoch. Finally, in August 2003, a US media entrepreneur previously unknown in Germany was awarded the contract: Haim Saban, together with a banking consortium, acquired the majority stake. At the time, it was rumored that a significant portion of Deutschland AG would be sold to foreign investors. Although German media politicians tried to prevent this by promoting a "German solution," Saban was able to only He acquired a core of the German TV industry for €525 million. "That level of ownership would never be allowed in the US. It would be too much concentration," Saban told the New York Times in 2004. While John Malone's attempt to take over the German cable networks failed, Saban was able to allay the concerns of regulators. He revealed his secret to success to the NYT: "I sweettalked them." 

Despite all assurances of a long-term commitment, Saban decided to resell ProSiebenSat.1 in mid-2005. Negotiations with Axel Springer AG regarding a complete takeover were already well advanced when the Federal Cartel Office and the Commission for the Investigation of Concentration in the Media Sector (KEK) rejected the idea. The official justification cited the market power that would arise from a merger in the television advertising market, the reader market for over-the-counter newspapers, and the nationwide advertising market for newspapers, which would not be permissible under antitrust law. The looming veto by the authorities led Springer to withdraw its takeover offer in early 2006. In a second attempt, Saban reached an agreement with a consortium of foreign financial investors at the end of 2006. The group was sold to Permira and KKR for around three billion euros, and on March 6, 2007, the majority takeover by Lavena Holding 4 GmbH, controlled by KKR and Permira, became legally binding. With the largest deal in German media history, Saban had almost sixfolded his invested capital. 

In December 2007, Axel Springer surprisingly sold its 12 percent stake in the broadcasting group to Permira/KKR for approximately €19 per share. The previous summer, one share had been worth €30; in retrospect, the deal nevertheless proved lucrative. Despite the subsequent merger with the television group SBS Broadcasting, controlled by KKR and Permira, the share price fell below €5 in 2008, and in March 2009, it temporarily fell below the €1 mark. At the beginning of 2014, KKR and Permira sold their shares to institutional investors and exited. They earned approximately half a billion euros with ProSiebenSat.1. 

In mid-2015, ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG was transformed into ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE to facilitate international expansion into the digital sector. In 2016, the company became the first German media company ever to be promoted from the MDAX to the DAX (although it was delisted from the DAX in 2018). Due to declining ratings and competition from streaming and online services, ProSiebenSat.1 shares have lost more than half their value since 2016. 

Major acquisitions subsequently included majority stakes in international TV production companies, such as the British company Endor Productions (primarily fictional programs) and CPL Productions (factual and comedy formats), as well as the Israeli company July August Productions. The AG's own program distribution division was renamed from "SevenOne International" to "Red Arrow International." 

In the German market, ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE recorded acquisitions in the e-commerce sector: after the Munich-based search engine optimizer Booming (from Holtzbrinck Digital GmbH), the price comparison site preis24.de (60 percent stake) and also a majority stake in "Tropo," a German subsidiary of the online travel agency Opodo. The company also aimed to grow in the music sector with the online radio station AMPYA, launched in the summer of 2013 and long since discontinued. In June 2015, the company acquired an 80 percent stake in the price comparison portal Verivox for €170 million. Like all activities outside of its core TV business, this portal has long been under scrutiny.

In July 2022, the US part of Red Arrow Studios' production business was sold to The North Road Company. This included Kinetic Content, Left/Right, 44 Blue, Half Yard Productions, and Dorsey Pictures. The European production business remains part of the entertainment business, as does the distribution business Red Arrow Studios International.

In September 2022, the ProSiebenSat.1 Group acquired the remaining 50 percent of Joyn from Warner Bros. Discovery. The joint venture was founded with Discovery in 2017 and has operated under the name Joyn in the group's entertainment segment since 2019.

Berlusconi's company MediaForEurope (MFE, Mediaset until fall 2021) acquired 9.6 percent of ProSiebenSat.1 shares in 2019 for approximately €330 million. In March 2022, MFE announced that it held more than 25 percent of the group and, in December 2022, filed a complaint with the Austrian Federal Competition Authority regarding the acquisition of "de facto sole control of ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE." The German Journalists' Association, ver.di, Markus Söder, and others warned of a "takeover by Berlusconi," while press commentaries spoke of shrill alarm bells and "fear of right-wing populism and job cuts" (Tagesspiegel). However, in September 2023, the KEK had no objections to increasing MFE's stake to 26.6 percent.

The shareholder structure of ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE as of November 13, 2024: MFE 29.99%, PPF Group 14.94%, treasury shares 2.70%, free float 52.37%.

management

In spring 2020, former CFO Rainer Beaujean became CEO, succeeding the hapless former Dyson manager Max Conze. In 2018, Conze took over a relatively flourishing company that had become a takeover target due to a failed three-pillar strategy (entertainment, content production, and e-commerce). Beaujean joined, but on November 1, 2022, it was already over for him, too. The reason: poor sales figures from the digital investments (Flaconi, Verivox, Parship), the departure of executives, and the entire digital strategy threatened to fail.

The new man at the helm is former RTL manager and Dutch native Bert Habets, born on January 9, 1971, and previously a member of the supervisory board. According to ProSiebenSat.1, Habets has "profound experience in managing global media companies as well as extensive expertise in the launch and expansion of video streaming services."

Business segments

ProSiebenSat.1 is divided into the following segments:

Entertainment:
The Seven.One Entertainer Group brings together 15 TV channels available in the DACH region (including ProSieben, Sat.1, Kabel Eins, sixx, PULS, and ATV), the production company SevenPictures, the web content developer Studio71, and more. The German streaming app Joyn has also been wholly owned by ProSiebenSat.1 since September 2022.

Dating & Video:
ProSiebenSat.1 holds a 53 percent stake in the international ParshipMeet Group, which has various online dating brands in its portfolio (Parship, one of the leading global players in the dating sector, and ElitePartner in Germany, eharmony, MeetMe and Tagged in the USA, and LOVOO throughout Europe).

Commerce & Ventures:
The group controls 71.6 percent of the Nucom Group, which owns consumer advice, lifestyle, and event online brands such as Verivox, Jochen Schweizer, flaconi, and moebel.de. The group's own investment arms, SevenAccelerator, SevenVentures, and SevenGrowth, offer start-up companies loans and media deals in the form of prominent advertising placements in the programming of ProSiebenSat.1 channels.

Current developments

On December 5, 2024, the industry news service Meedia reported that Berlusconi's MediaForEurope (MFE) had commissioned the major Italian bank Unicredit to organize a multi-billion euro syndicated loan ("over 3 billion euros"). The signs point to a ProSiebenSat.1 takeover targeted for 2025.

In spring 2024, it became known (reported by the Italian newspaper "Il Messaggero" and Reuters) that MFE was negotiating with several banks to finance a takeover of the German TV group. In November, MFE increased its stake in ProSiebenSat.1 to 29.99 percent – just below the critical 30 percent threshold at which it would be obligated to make a takeover offer.

Meedia continues: "MFE's course has been clear for some time: ProSiebenSat.1 should focus entirely on its entertainment business – and divest all activities that are not part of it. In the wake of the last quarterly figures, P7S1 had announced as a precaution that the cosmetics mail order company Flaconi and the comparison portal Verivox were about to be sold (...) The most likely scenario is that MFE will only attempt a takeover after the sales." Neither MFE nor ProSiebenSat.1 wanted to comment on the matter.