Think the merger talks has failed already, TPG started talking talking with Dish in January, nothing since, no rumors, nothing.
Dish would be smart to wait, DirecTV is losing about 1.6-2 million subs a year ( estimated) and that will get worse after Sunday Ticket is gone, get a much better deal if they wait.
Also ( and this is not political, just repeating what Dish has said) that they do not think it will get approved under the current administration, unless they can show the government that one will go out of business without a merger.
In about 2-3 years, it will be impossible for DirecTV to turn things around and who else would want to buy a failing Satellite Company that has maybe 2 years left.
Math-if they are losing 1.6 million a year and it does not increase ( it will), in 5 years, that is 8 million gone and they only have about 10 Million Satellite Subs left.
Dish does not lose as many subs, if DirecTV’s losses increase after Sunday Ticket is gone, Dish should have more Satellite Subs then DirecTV in about 2-3 years.
Dish is losing around 1 million satellite subs per year now, while DTV is probably losing about twice that. Dish is now at 8 million sat subs vs. maybe 10 million for DTV (with another few million on DTV Stream and Uverse TV). Although, as you say, DTV will likely take an even bigger one-time hit next year after losing Sunday Ticket. I expect the two services to have a roughly equal number of sat subs by the end of '23, around 6.5 million each. Dish might even have half a million more than DTV by then.
But both DTV and Dish are obviously better positioned to make such extrapolations into the near-term future as they have all the data. So any potential deal being negotiated right now between the two companies would, of course, factor all that into each side's valuation and the terms of the deal.
A problem for Dish, though, is that their two newest sats, Echostar XIV and XV, were launched in Mar. 2010 and July 2010, respectively. The expected lifespan for these sats is only 15 years. Now, these sats can and do often have enough fuel in them to remain in orbit and useful for some amount of time past 15 years. But they're basically on borrowed time at that point. So Dish is looking at their entire current fleet of satellites potentially being done by summer 2025, just under three years from now. And DTV/TPG obviously is aware of that.
Additionally, Dish might be down to only about 5 million satellite subs by mid-2025. Keep in mind that Dish, unlike DTV, does not have a streaming version of their service available to capture some of their price-sensitive broadband-connected customers. While DTV sat is losing customers at about twice the rate of Dish, some chunk of those folks are sticking with the company via DTV Stream. Dish only has Sling, which is definitely not a replacement for Dish the way that DTV Stream is for DTV. And recent figures show that Sling has even begun to lose customers. The future merger of the two companies will include both their sat and streaming services, so all of it has to be considered.
Large, potentially controversial mergers such as between the only two remaining satellite TV services in the nation are typically attempted at times when they run the lowest risk of political backlash from candidates angling for votes. In other words, it's best to announce such a deal outside of election season. This, I think, was the reality behind Ergen's remarks earlier this year about this year not being a good time politically to attempt a deal. Better to wait and announce a deal *after* the upcoming midterm elections. But by the same token, they wouldn't want to wait until Jan. 2024 to announce a deal because, well, we'll be full-swing into presidential primary season and the run-up to the Nov. '24 elections by then.
Does Dish really want to wait until Jan. '25 to strike a deal with DTV, knowing that their last two viable sats might run out of fuel by the end of that year? Seems to be cutting it a little too close for comfort to me. And why would they assume that the presidency would change in Jan. '25? And even if it does why bet that a GOP admin would be any friendlier to the deal than the Biden admin? (Yes, the GOP tends to let big business do what they want but also remember that satellite TV impacts rural Americans more than anyone else and the GOP base skews heavily rural/exurban.)
Meanwhile, it's been reported that TPG went into their deal with AT&T to own DTV with the expectation of exiting (i.e. selling their 30% stake in the company) within 3 years. That would mean a sale closing by Aug. 2024.
Anything's possible, of course, but I continue to think that all the facts point to a merger deal between Dish and DTV being announced any time between this Thanksgiving and mid-2023. It would obviously take several months for the deal to be reviewed and then close.
