Banijay Entertainment was already the largest independent television producer in the world. So it decided to get bigger.
Banijay’s mega-merger with fellow indie giant All3Media, completed this week, creates a true TV colossus. The new London-based production and distribution group brings together nearly 200 production companies and labels across 25 territories, including the companies that make and sell such shows as The Traitors, Big Brother, Survivor, MasterChef, Peaky Blinders and Black Mirror, some hundreds of thousands of hours of programming, and combined revenues of $8.5 billion.
Coming fast on the heels of the $2.1 billion offer by Comcast-owned Sky to acquire British commercial network ITV, the Banijay-All3Media deal is a further sign that traditional TV is scaling up in an effort to survive, perhaps even thrive, in a rapidly changing digital marketplace.
Banijay CEO Marco Bassetti is betting not only that the company can again scale up, as it’s done with previous acquisitions — of Zodiak Media in 2015 and Endemol Shine in 2019 — but also that it can maintain its still highly profitable TV business while extending and expanding its reach into live events, sports and across social media. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter shortly after completing the deal, Bassetti outlined his plans to grow Banijay while holding on to the “entrepreneurial DNA” that has defined its success to date. “We have to preserve the flexibility that defines our company. Our industry changes constantly. We have to keep adapting.”
