Univision Communications CEO Vincent Sadusky said the conflict between Univision and Dish Network is likely to hurt the satellite company more in the long run, costing them subscribers, revenue and profits.
Speaking on Univision’s third-quarter earnings call, Sadusky said getting a deal done would have been best for both companies.
“However Dish has been unwilling to pay fair market rates that we have already achieved.
We will not do a deal that undermines the value of our services,” Sadusky said.
“While not doing a deal will create short-term financial and operational headwinds for Univision, we expect the long-term impact to Dish will be more significant,” he said.
Dish on Monday dropped Univision Deportes, the last major Univision network it still carried. It dropped Univision’s lifestyle networks in March and the main network in June.
Earlier this month, Dish reported subscriber losses as part of its third-quarter earnings report.
“Given that Hispanic adults spend twice as much time with Univision as with any other U.S. media company, it should come as no surprise that our viewers have left Dish in unprecedented numbers,” Sadusky said on the call. “We believe without Univision, Unimas and Galavision Dish lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers in the quarter alone.”
Sadusky said that Univision estimates that Hispanic subscribers represent about $1 billion in annual revenue for Dish and hundreds of million in EBITDA. With Dish now dropping Univision Deportes, “We would expect a significant portion of Dish’s approximately 1 million remaining DishLatino subscribers will migrate to other MVPD partners, leading to continued quarters of accelerated subscriber declines for Dish,” he said.
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