EchoStar is in advanced talks to sell satellite TV provider Dish Network to rival DirecTV, the closely held pay TV operator owned by private-equity firm TPG and AT&T, according CNBC citing people familiar with the matter. While the sides hope to complete a deal by Monday, no deal is assured, and the talks may still fall apart, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.
The combination of Dish and DirecTV has been rumored for years and nearly happened in 2002 until it collapsed under regulatory pressure. This time, the deal is being driven by EchoStar’s desire to pay off $1.98 billion of debt that matures in November, said two of the people familiar with the process. EchoStar had just $521 million in cash and cash equivalents and marketable investment securities as of June 30 and forecast negative cash flows for the remainder of 2024, according to public filings.
A potential DirecTV-Dish transaction is being structured as all cash, with DirecTV paying EchoStar for the satellite TV business, its digital business Sling and associated liabilities, said people familiar with the matter. All in, the transaction may be worth more than $9 billion, according to one of the people.
Satellite TV, once some of the biggest distributors of the TV bundle, has been declining for years — often at a faster rate than cable competitors — as consumers switch to subscription streaming services such as Netflix,
Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video. Dish ended its last quarter with 6.1 million satellite subscribers and 2 million customers for Sling TV, Dish’s over-the-internet package of linear networks.
DirecTV has also felt the pain, losing millions of subscribers since AT&T bought the company in 2015 for $67 billion with debt. AT&T spun it out in 2021 and sold a portion of the company to TPG. At that time, DirecTV had approximately 15.4 million subscribers. It has about 11 million today, CNBC previously reported.
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