churn numbers since the company lost the Belgian football rights.
Before the announcement that Telenet and VOO acquired the rights to the Belgian football league, about 70,000 (22,94 EUR, -0,33%) TV customers had an additional football subscription ('All Foot' or 'My club'). Sincethen, about 6,600* of these football customers churned, of which the majority churning with Broadband and/or Fixed Voice as well. Until 31 August Belgacom's football subscribers could churn without any penalty. says the above mentioned churn result, however, remains preliminary. At the announcement of Belgacom's third quarter earnings release (28 October 2011) the company will have a better view of the real impact.
Our View & conclusion:
The impact of the loss of the Belgian football rights on seems to remain quite limited which is obviously good news for , and negative for Telenet (and VOO). It seems like the number of clients switching from to Telenet and VOO might be limited.
As a reminder, we calculated that if Telenet signs up 35k new clients (of which we assume 50% takes a triple-play package and 50% only takes digital TV with the football offer) and they manage to upsell the TV offer to 70k existing triple-play clients, the company would roughly break-even, with the incremental profits covering the costs of the rights as well as the production costs.
Given the disclosed numbers, it seems unlikely that Telenet would reach these numbers in the short term.