DirecTV Terminates Deal To Buy Dish Satellite Business

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: DirecTV is pulling out of an agreement to buy its satellite rival Dish after bondholders objected to terms of the deal. DirecTV issued an announcement last night saying "it has notified EchoStar of its election to terminate, effective as of 11:59 p.m., ET on Friday, November 22nd, 2024, the Equity Purchase Agreement (EPA) pursuant to which it had agreed to acquire EchoStar's video distribution business, Dish DBS."

In the deal announced on September 30, DirecTV was going to buy the Dish satellite TV and Sling TV streaming business from EchoStar for a nominal fee of $1. DirecTV would have taken on $9.75 billion of Dish debt if the transaction moved ahead. The deal did not include the Dish Network cellular business. Dish bondholders quickly objected to terms requiring them to take a loss on the value of their debt. DirecTV had said Dish notes would be exchanged with "a reduced principal amount of DirecTV debt which will have terms and collateral that mirror DirecTV's existing secured debt." The principal amount would have been reduced by at least $1.568 billion.

DirecTV last night said it is now exercising its right to terminate the acquisition because noteholders did not accept the exchange offer. "The termination of the Agreement follows Dish DBS noteholders' failure to agree to the proposed Exchange Debt Offer Terms issued by EchoStar, which was a condition of DirecTV's obligations to acquire Dish under the EPA," the press release said. DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow indicated his company wasn't willing to change the deal to satisfy Dish bondholders. "We have terminated the transaction because the proposed Exchange Terms were necessary to protect DirecTV's balance sheet and our operational flexibility," Morrow said.

Too much competition from starlink?

[Hadlock]

I am just stunned to find out that sattelite TV companies are still in business in 2024. Who is paying for this stuff? I can't think of anyone who still has cable TV at this point let alone a big floppy thing bolted to the side of their house.

Re:

[NateTech]

Rural. Where telecom companies offer 1.5M DSL and mom and pop WISPs offer 10M.

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[erice]

Rural. Where telecom companies offer 1.5M DSL and mom and pop WISPs offer 10M.

Privileged! Where I grew up and my mother and brother still live, there is no DSL. A few years back they moved from satellite to cellular.

Re: Too much competition from starlink?

[paul_engr]

I was just offered 384k dsl by AT&T after being informed there was no gigabit fiber available at my new place. Naturally, I declined

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[luther349]

grab a Starlink issue solved.

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[Pascoea]

Old people. I'm not saying that to be mean, that's just my personal observation. I don't know anyone* under 40 that still has a cable/satellite package. *The exception to that "rule" are sports nuts. Cable is the last bastion of getting all your sports fixes in the same place.

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[luther349]

i think steaming platforms sell sports packs these days as well.

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[Pascoea]

For sure you can get them, but it's a mess. NFL? If you want to watch all your teams games you need Amazon for TNF, ESPN for MNF, and to be honest I don't know what you'd need for Sunday games. If it's not on Broadcast locally it's off to the High Seas for me. Baseball? In my market I literally haven't been able to (legally) stream them for the last 2 or 3 years. Then you get into the dumb shit like not being able to stream to a TV, but you can still watch on a phone or tablet. I can't speak for NBA, NH

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[luther349]

It did take forever to get my dad to drop cable TV. Now he gets streaming platforms and has far bigger and better selections.

Re: Too much competition from starlink?

[SeaFox]

I am just stunned to find out that sattelite TV companies are still in business in 2024.

Didn't underestimate the population of Boomers out there who never learned technology. My father lost access to the cable TV that had previously been included in his rent for his apartment. He told me he misses it because he's become quite a news junky. He doesn't know anything about streaming services and doesn't want to learn when i told him there are free ones. He gets free Internet access and owns a smartphone, but doesn't know how to use it really beyond making calls, texts, and reading (but not replyi

Bondholders are going to force bankruptcy?

[laughingskeptic]

In the very near term Dish is facing bankruptcy and if that happens, the bond holders are going to be lucky to get 25% of their face value, but they just turned down a deal that would have given them 86%. However Charlie Ergen screwed the bondholders with an accounting maneuver in January. https://www.axios.com/2024/01/... [axios.com] So maybe the bondholders are betting that if they can get this into court sooner than later then they can fight to undo the January maneuver? There has to be more to this story because as the article is written, the decision by the bondholders makes no sense.

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[luther349]

No golden parachute for the executives and shareholders.

Nobody wants DirecTV either

[sinkskinkshrieks]

Legacy media is going the way of the shopping mall, the piano tuner, and the ice merchant. Even Comcast doesn't want MSNBC. And no one wants Comcast/Xfinity or AT&T because they suck, but found niches like mobile phones and cable ISPs.