Reuters: Banijay/All3Media big enough to woo ITV16 Jan 2026 13:38
Reuters speculation a combined Banijay/ All3Media would be big enough to make a move on ITV - ironic after ITV previously looked at buying All3Media…
“ the now larger Banijay/All3Media would be better placed to woo ITV “
“BREAKINGVIEWS – TV tie – up is more pleasing with 'Love Island' sequel
15 Jan 2026 11:03
(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.) By Jennifer Johnson
LONDON, Jan 15 (Reuters Breakingviews) – The best reality TV competitions invite contestants to couple up and then betray each other. Alliances, it seems, are just as fluid behind the camera. France’s Banijay , the owner of the Big
Brother and Survivor franchises, has confirmed it’s in merger talks with The Traitors’ creator All3Media. Both parties have also explored various tie-ups with ITV in the recent past, though none were successful. While this new combination would create a European production champion, there could be more twists in the M&A plotline.
Television commissioning and distribution are increasingly dominated by a handful of deep-pocketed U.S. streaming services.
Against this backdrop, it makes sense for smaller production companies – which create, finance and deliver programmes – to pool their resources. This certainly appears to be Banijay’s view. Sources told Reuters that the Amsterdam-listed group entered talks with All3Media to merge their production businesses at the end of last year, after similar discussions over ITV’s Studios unit fell apart. That could effectively involve a carve-up of Banijay itself, which also makes money through online gaming.
With combined 2024 revenues of almost 4.5 billion euros, and 649 million euros of EBITDA, the union would be a relative giant of European television. Using Banijay’s own trailing EV/EBITDA multiple of 7 times, per Visible Alpha, the merged production business could be worth 4.5 billion euros. That might be conservative: previous transactions have valued TV studios as high as 10 times EBITDA. A deal might still require some haggling: All3Media is smaller and had net debt equivalent to nearly 8 times EBITDA in 2024. Owner Redbird IMI may therefore need to pony up some cash to hang on to a meaningful stake, Reuters says.
History suggests there could be savings on the table.
Banijay’s 2020 acquisition of Endemol Shine delivered cost reductions of 67 million euros across 18 months, equivalent to 2.5% of group sales at the time. On that basis, an All3Media deal would produce synergies of around 110 million euros, worth nearly 800 million euros after tax and capitalised.
The snag is that even that merged entity would still be a minnow next to the likes of Netflix , which spent some $16 billion on new content in 2024. Yet the now larger
Banijay/All3Media would be better placed to woo ITV, the maker of Love Island. The UK company confirmed last year that it was in talks to sell its broadcast division to Comcas
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