Premiere beats August customer target

[BGonaSTICK]

German pay TV broadcaster Premiere said it had won 242,000 subscribers for its premier league soccer offer by Aug. 28, beating its target of 200,000 for the month. Chief Executive Michael Boernicke said on Wednesday, ahead of the IFA consumer electronics trade fair in Berlin, that 188,000 current subscribers had added the Bundesliga offer to their subscriptions.

He added that Premiere gained 54,000 new subscribers for the Bundesliga offer.

Shares in Premiere were up 0.79 percent at 15.30 euros at 13.28 GMT.

Last month Premiere received approval from regulatory authorities for an accord with cable television operator UnityMedia, which gives Premiere the sought-after rights to show Germany's most popular sport live.

On the back of that deal Premiere said on Aug. 2 it had won 45,000 new subscribers in the previous two weeks alone and expected to sell a total of 200,000 new subscriptions by the end of the month.

Despite the surge, former CEO Georg Kofler, who resigned this month to pursue new challenges, said he was sticking to a target of 3.7 million subscribers by the end of the year.

Subscribers had risen to 3.47 million in the second quarter.

The Munich-based company lost the Bundesliga rights in 2005 to arena, the sports rights unit of Unity Media, and struggled to find a way to continue showing premiere league matches.

Source: Reuters