Pier Silvio Berlusconi, CEO and chairman of MFE-MediaForEurope
European broadcasting group MFE-MediaForEurope has been one of the continent’s loudest proponents of TV consolidation over the last decade. In the face of the existential threat posed by the Silicon Valley giants, MFE argues that banding together to boost scale and pool resources is European broadcasters’ best bet at remaining competitive.
Almost exactly a year ago, MFE took a major step to turn this vision into reality, completing its acquisition of German TV group ProSiebenSat.1. Today’s H1 earnings give an early look at how this strategy is playing out financially, and while there are some positive signs, there’s more work to be done to turn MFE’s increased scale into real ad revenue growth.
Scale to compete, or to withstand?
The biggest positive from the H1 report is substantial growth in MFE’s pro forma profits (which include ProSieben’s 2025 numbers prior to the acquisition, to enable a direct comparison).
In H1 2025, the pro forma figures for MFE’s earnings show a loss of €7.3 million. This year, it’s swung back into the black, with profits of €145.7 million. The ProSieben tie-up played a big part here, as MFE’s CEO and chairman Pier Silvio Berlusconi said his company has already achieved €200 million in efficiencies and optimisations within its primary entertainment business unit, in just the first half of this year. Consolidation has enabled significant cost-cutting, boosting profitability.
But the argument for creating a European TV champion isn’t just about cost efficiencies. The idea is to more effectively compete for ad revenues through increased scale, and on this front, it’s harder to see the merger having any impact yet. Total revenues across the group were down by 6.1 percent year-on-year, falling to €2.95 billion. And Berlusconi mentioned specific struggles within its ad business.
There were temporary factors at play as the FIFA Men’s World Cup, aired by competitors across all of the markets MFE operates in, drew ad spend elsewhere. MFE expects to see continued impact from the World Cup in Q3, with ad revenues projected to fall by a low single-digit percentage. Nonetheless, the broadcaster predicts performance will improve over the latter half of the year.
However, Berlusconi also noted that the wider ad market is “becoming increasingly difficult, with traditional media and television on the defensive and further growth in the digital segment, dominated by the major web multinationals”. Notably, there weren’t any specific predictions in MFE’s earnings release about a return to growth for its advertising business.
That said, bringing together two major European broadcasting businesses takes time — not just in melding operations and cultures, but also in spinning up new initiatives to capitalise on the two companies’ combined strengths. Adding scale won’t have much of an impact so long as each of MFE’s regional broadcasters runs separate ad businesses. The key will be in how the group enables advertisers to run campaigns across its entire offering.
Berlusconi suggested that the full benefits of MFE’s strategy will take time to materialse on its quarterly earnings reports. “We are sure that MFE’s new scale — essential in order to withstand and compete — will continue to make an ever-greater contribution,” he said. But withstanding and competing are two different things. Will MFE’s added scale provide enough of a competitive boost to return the business to long-term ad revenue growth? Or will it simply help the group withstand the turbulent TV market for a little longer?
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