VIASAT TO SELL PAY-TV PACKAGES IN COM HEM’S CABLE TV NETWORK

VIASAT TO SELL PAY-TV PACKAGES IN COM HEM’S CABLE TV NETWORK

Stockholm
June 10, 2010
08.00 CEST
Modern Times Group MTG AB (publ.) (‘MTG’ or ‘the Group’), the international entertainment broadcasting group, today announced that it has signed a long-term agreement with leading Swedish cable-TV operator Com Hem. The agreement until the end of 2013 enables Viasat to market and sell its premium pay-TV channel packages to almost 1.65 million Com Hem TV households in Sweden, of which 600,000 are digital TV households. 

Viasat will now be able to market and sell its packages directly to all of Com Hem’s cable TV customers. The agreement follows previous similar virtual operator agreements with Telia in Sweden, Telenor in Sweden and Norway, Elion in Estonia, as well as with Tele2’s cable TV operation in Sweden.

Com Hem is the largest Swedish TV distributor and reaches 40% of all Swedish households. Com Hem has to date offered pay-TV packages including Viasat’s free-TV and pay-TV channels, as well as the TV1000 movie and Viasat Sport packages. The new agreement will in due course enable Com Hem’s customers to subscribe to the full Viasat Gold package, which includes all of Viasat’s own-branded free-TV and pay-TV channels and a wide range of leading third party free-TV and pay-TV channels. The Viasat Gold package is a bundled combination of Viasat's Premium package and Com Hem's Medium package.

The new agreement expands the existing sales cooperation between Viasat and Com Hem, and Viasat will now be the exclusive partner for the door to door sale of Viasat pay-TV packages and the whole range of Com Hem packages to Com Hem households. Furthermore, the agreement significantly enhances the Viasat OnDemand video offering, which will now be available via Com Hem’s digital set top boxes.

Hans-Holger Albrecht, President and CEO of MTG, commented: “The agreement with Com Hem extends our position as Scandinavia’s leading virtual pay-TV operator. We can now market our full pay-TV packages to a new universe of cable households that we have not been able to reach directly before. With this deal, we are able to access 90% of cable households in Sweden and 75% of IPTV households, in addition to our existing satellite platform. This is all part of our “anytime anywhere” strategy, whereby we strive to make our channels as broadly available on as many distribution platforms as possible, and illustrates the growing demand for our leading premium pay-TV packages”.

 

 

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For further information, please visit www.mtg.se or contact:

 

Hans-Holger Albrecht, President & CEOTel:                               +46 (0) 8 562 000 50 

Investor & Analyst Enquiries:Matthew HooperTel:                               +44 (0) 7768 440 414Email:                           investor.relations@mtg.se                                                  

Media Enquiries:Bert Willborg                 +44 (0) 791 2280 850Email:                           bert.willborg@mtg.se     

Modern Times Group is a leading international entertainment broadcasting group with the largest geographical broadcast footprint in Europe. MTG's Viasat Broadcasting is the leading free-TV and pay-TV operator in Scandinavia and the Baltics, and has broadcasting operations in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Russia, Ukraine and Ghana. Viasat’s free-TV and pay-TV channels and pay-TV platforms attract a total of 125 million viewers in 31 countries. MTG is also the major shareholder in Russia’s largest independent television broadcaster (CTC Media – Nasdaq: CTCM), and the number one commercial radio operator and internet retailer of entertainment products in the Nordic region.

Modern Times Group MTG AB class A and B shares are listed on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm's Large Cap market (‘MTGA’ and ‘MTGB’).  

The information in this announcement is that which Modern Times Group MTG AB is required to disclose under the Securities Markets Act. This information was released for publication at 08.00 CET on 10 June 2010.

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