Höttges: sports and drama boosting Deutsche Telekom’s TV base

Investment in sports and drama content is helping fuel growth in Deutsche Telekom’s domestic TV base, according to CEO Timotheus Höttges.

Timotheus Höttges

Hailing the addition of 65,000 subscribers to the Entertain service’s TV base over the last year, Höttges, speaking after the company posed its Q3 figures, said that Telekom’s “broad range of products and services is helping fuel this growth”. He cited its offering of Bundesliga 3 football and Europa League rights in collaboration with Sky, as well as its investment in TV series, including its first home-grown production Germanized, which will air next year.

The telco’s Q3 results came after Höttges pulled out of talks to merge the company’s US mobile division with Sprint.

Deutsche Telekom had 3.089 million TV subscribers in Germany at the end of September, up 2.1% quarter-on-quarter and 9.6% year-on-year.

The operator said that in the face of intense price competition it was now focusing on integrated offers, TV and fibre connections in its fixed-line business. As a result, it said the number of broadband connections increased by 183,000 in the first nine months, while the number of TV customers increased by 210,000. In the traditional fixed network, on the other hand, the number of connections decreased by 434,000.

In Europe outside Germany, Telekom had 4.2 million TV customers at the end of September, up 1.1% quarter-on-quarter and up 4.7% year-on-year.

The company said that TV and entertainment services had impetus in its European markets outside Germany, with 151,000 additions in the first nine months coming from Hungary and Slovakia, its fastest growing TV markets.

TV revenue from Telekom’s international European markets grew by 7.1% for the first nine months to €372 million.

Telekom raised its full-year profit forecast on the back of revenue growth of 0.8% in Q3 to €18.3 billion and adjusted EBITDA growth of 3.3% to €5.7 billion.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Deutsche Telekom had 5.417 million TV customers in Germany at the end of Q3. In fact, Telekom had 5.417 fibre broadband customers.