Vodafone's New Zealand has entered into a merger deal worth $2.4bn (£1.7bn) with Sky Network, the country's largest pay-TV operator with over 830,000 subscribers. Vodafone New Zeland's parent company, the UK-based Vodafone group will own 51% of the combined company.
Vodafone New Zealand's head, Russell Stanners will be the chief executive of the new company with Sky chief executive John Fellet heading the media and content arm of the merged entity.
The merger will enable both companies to tap significant potential for packaging and for cross marketing of their products. In a joint statement, both companies said that they will offer New Zealand's best entertainment content across all platforms and devices in a rapidly evolving media and telecommunications market.
Vodafone chief executive Russell Stanners
Content is always looking for different networks to go over and deliver to different devices and we're pretty excited about the opportunity to look at new exciting formats over time and how we can deliver that content."So I think for rugby fans out there you've got the choices you've got today and hopefully in the future there's a lot more options for them going forward.
