ProSieben, MFE, and the year control changed hands
Meet Europe's largest Free to air broadcaster
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In 2025, Italy’s MFE moved from persistent minority shareholder to de facto kingmaker at Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1, with PPF bowing out and tendering its entire stake. The result, pending final settlement, is a new center of gravity in European commercial TV and will be the ultimate test for the “pan-European champion” thesis. Let’s dig in.
Today at a glance:
The 2025 saga
Why MFE wants control
What it means for Germany and the EU
What’s next
Tune in: this Thursday as we kick off Season 2 of The Media Odyssey Podcast with
!What should you expect? Our usual banter and a breakdown of key summer news: from Paramount’s kill list to YouTube’s making headlines (again) and finally our prognostics on the next Channel 4 CEO following Mahon’s departure.
The 2025 saga
Let’s start with a quick who’s who so you get the principal characters of this European saga:
The target:
→ ProSiebenSat.1, one of the two biggest private TV groups in Germany (with RTL who went after Sky), hit by ad softness and mixed diversification bets, now heading for tighter strategic control.
The suitors:
→ MFE-MediaForEurope, the Berlusconi family’s listed vehicle, fully controls Mediaset in Italy and Spain. It wants scale, a cleaner cost base, and a pan-EU sales house.
→ PPF, a Prague-based investment group with telecom and media holdings across Central Eastern Europe, entered with an all-cash €7 partial offer to lift its stake up to 29.99 percent under German takeover rules, positioning itself as a financially driven alternative to MFE.
The eagle eyes:
Regulators, the KEK (Germany’s media-plurality watchdog), the Bundeskartellamt (the federal cartel office) and Berlin (as in the German Government) followed the matter closely as a German Broadcaster could be changing hands, to an extra-territorial company no less. Bundeskartellamt checks competition, KEK checks opinion power.
The timeline:
This past year, we’ve witnessed an intense battle for control over ProSieben. Here’s an overview of each episode of this European saga:
The ownership before / after:
