Jeff Zucker has told Deadline the merger of Banijay Entertainment and All3Media will create the biggest independent player on the international TV production and distribution scene.
“This is the world’s largest independent media content company by catalog, by hours, production, by any measure, with an enterprise value of $8 billion and equity value of $5 billion,” Zucker said Tuesday in the aftermath of the deal being announced earlier in the day.
Banijay Entertainment CEO Marco Bassetti, meanwhile, admitted there will be job losses but told us any savings will be plowed into content and talent post-merger.
Media veteran Zucker is CEO of RedBird IMI and will be chairman of the entity – which will simply be called Banijay. It will be home to a huge catalog including the likes of The Traitors and Big Brother on the unscripted side and Peaky Blinders and Midsomer Murders in scripted. The deal reshapes the international TV production and distribution landscape at a stroke.
“The reality is this is a truly global combination with incredible world-class IP that sits incredibly well-positioned within the new global media ecosystem,” Zucker said.
Bassetti will be the CEO of the company when the deal closes, which is expected this fall. The Italian is a veteran of previous mega-mergers including the unison of Endemol and Shine. This, however, is the biggest deal he has been across. “There are many things that we can do now better than before,” he told Deadline when asked about the potential of the new Banijay. “We can better monetize all the talent that we have in a combined group, we can better use a much larger footprint, we can better develop live [events] into the group. We have much more leverage than we have before because now we have 260,000 hours in our catalog. There is a better opportunity to retain IP.”
Announcing the deal today, the partners identified €50M ($58M) of synergies. Both sides have stand-alone program sales businesses, and there will be job losses; execs highlighted overlaps in procurement, real estate and other areas. But, in what will be a reassuring note for the scores of producers in the group, Bassetti added: “There is no duplication in talent and creativity. We want to keep all our talent, all our creative labels as they are now. We want to give them more.
“We would be stupid to cut creative people in our group because that’s one reason why we made this deal. There are some costs that will be duplicated … but that money will be used to invest. What we cut on one side, we will invest in the other.”
The Banijay topper added that the world is moving too fast to say whether Banijay will push for yet more M&A when the dust has settled on this deal. Asked about the learnings he’d had gleaned from seeing earlier mergers up close, he said: “The lesson is that you have to be very clear, to plan what you need to do and then to act as soon as possible in order not to create ambiguity or to leave people in limbo.”
Jane Turton will move from CEO of All3Media to Deputy CEO of the new Banijay. Bassetti noted the duo “were aligned when we had discussions about our industry, what to do, what we can do more of.”
Zucker noted that today’s deal came after “about six months of intense conversations” and told us that not being tethered to a network, channels or streaming business will be an advantage for the new group. “It gives us a great ability to work with everyone, with every single distributor and new technology and not be beholden to any one organization. It gives us great flexibility and freedom.”
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