Virgin Media Ireland is centre stage to seismic shifts in the Irish TV landscape
Cable broadband, TV and mobile player Virgin Media Ireland has reported a 2pc increase in second quarter revenues to €100m.
The CEO of Virgin Media Ireland Tony Hanway said that the increase was due to more customers availing of the communications company’s varied offerings.
“We continued our super-fast broadband network expansion programme and we have added 13,000 new premises in 2016,” Hanway explained.
“Our entry into mobile will gather pace in the second half of 2016 as we plan to launch a mobile handset range for the first time coupled with free high-speed 4G services across Ireland.”
Ireland’s changing TV landscape
Virgin Media Ireland CEO Tony Hanway
The company has had an interesting quarter when you consider its acquisition of UTV Ireland for €10m. The acquisition came exactly a year after Virgin Media acquired TV3 for €87m.
“This is another exciting development for Virgin Media and demonstrates our continued commitment to providing great content for Irish viewers,” Hanway said.
“The proposed acquisition adds Ireland’s newest TV channel to our existing portfolio, which includes TV3, 3e and is subject to competition and regulatory approval by the relevant governing bodies.”
During the quarter, Virgin Media also sparked something of a sports TV rights row after it dropped the Eir Sport pack (including former Setanta and BT Sports channels) and signed a new agreement with Sky.
Liberty Global, Virgin Media’s parent company, reported H1 revenues of $9.7bn and added 277,000 subscribers worldwide.
Overall revenues for Virgin Media in the UK and Ireland in Q2 were $1.71bn, down from $1.75bn a year ago.
According to Liberty Global data, average revenue per user for Virgin Media in the UK and Ireland was £49.61 (€58.45 or $65.13) up from £49.23 last year.
TV sports image via Shutterstock
