Inside CEE Television

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Chris Dziadul, August 14 2026

Romanian Digi growth continues

Digi remains by far and away the largest pay-TV operator in its home market Romania. According to parent company Digi Communications, it ended the second quarter with 6,055,000 RGUs (Revenue Generating Units) or 1.6% more than a year earlier. Digi also posted strong growth in its mobile and broadband offers, up 20.2% and 4.3% to 8,424,000 and 5,244,000 respectively, though its fixed telephony RGU total fell by 6.6% to 774,000. Digi’s total revenues in the markets it is present in in Q2 amounted to €608 million, up 11% year-on-year. Adjusted EBOTDA was €169 million (+23% year-on-year). Inside CEE Television notes the Digi also offers pay-TV services in both Spain and Portugal. It also has had a presence in the UK through fibre broadband services.

LALIGA football returns to Sport Klub

United Group and its media business United Media have reached an agreement with LALIGA EA SPORTS to bring top-flight Spanish football back to Sport Klub in Croatia and Slovenia. Under the new four-year agreement, Sport Klub will exclusively broadcast all 380 LALIGA EA SPORTS matches each season through the end of the 2029/30 season.

Czech still favour terrestrial TV

Despite the growing popularity of pay-TV services in recent years, a significant percentage of viewers in the Czech Republic still only watch free-to-air (FTA) digital terrestrial TV channels. According to Atmedia, this amounts to 32% of those aged 15-69, though the number has fallen from 45% only five years ago. The main reason they opt for terrestrial TV is the wide choice of channels they can receive – 34 of the 55 currently measured TV channels in the country, with Warner TV, a new DVB-T2 channel, being recently added to the list. However, this is cited by 44% of terrestrial viewers, compared to 69% five years ago. The second most cited reason (35% of terrestrial TV viewers) is the unwillingness to pay for TV content, with a fifth considering that pay-TV costs are too high. Atmedia regularly carries out a “price test” to determine how much such viewers would be willing to pay and it has concluded that the optimal figure is now CZK150 (€6.20) a month. For that, viewers would expect more than 100 TV stations, at least two-thirds of which are in HD, and functionalities such as record, rewind and the ability to watch content simultaneously on multiple devices. Atmedia also notes that terrestrial TV remains most popular in small and medium-sized agglomerations in the Czech Republic.

Burgas to host Eurovision Song Contest

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and Bulgarian National Television (BNT) have revealed that city of Burgas on the Black Sea coast has been selected to host the 71st Eurovision Song Contest in May 2027. The Eurovision Song Contest is the world’s largest live music event and this year’s edition reached 132 million people across 35v measured markets.

New head for Russia’s ON Media

Dmitry Smirnov has been appointed the acting director of Russia’s ON Media, effective August 14. He takes over from Sofya Mitrofanova, who is leaving the holding and MTS Group to pursue a new opportunity. Smirnov has 15 years of experience in IT, telecommunications, and DeepTech and has served as CFO of ON Media since 2025. Prior to joining the media holding, he worked as CFO of a business unit at Positive Technologies (2024–2025). Earlier, he managed financial planning for MTS’s telecom business and worked in MegaFon’s strategy department, focusing on M&A projects and B2C segment development. Smirnov headed the strategy department at CRT Group from 2018-21 and began his career as a co-founder of the logistics automation startup RoboCV. Mitrofanova was head of ON Media (formerly MTS Media) since June 2024 and under her leadership the ON Media vertical business, which includes the streaming service Kion, was formed.