RTL Croatia, which has been present in the Republic of Croatia since the year 2004, has now been taken over by CME in an estimated 50 million euro transaction.
RTL Croatia/Hrvatska is set to get a brand new owner in a transaction that is expected to be successfully completed in the coming months. RTL Croatia’s ”parent”, the Luxembourg-German RTL Group, sold it to CME Media Enterprises (CME), part of the PPF Group from the Czech Republic, for an estimated 50 million euros. The current expectations are for the above transaction to be completed by the middle part of this year, after obtaining all of the necessary regulatory approvals and dealing with the involved paperwork.
With this move, CME has secured long-term rights to use the RTL brand, which boasts eight national TV channels and cable, cable service and a music house. PPF operates across an impressive 25 countries in various sectors and employs as many as 80,000 people globally, while CME covers the media business (TV and on-demand platforms) in five CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) countries, where it broadcasts 33 TV channels.
Until the year 2017, CME was the owner of NovaTV, the main commercial competitor to RTL here in the Republic of Croatia, when it sold it to the United Media group, which also has the N1 cable channel.