A Star is Born

The final deal points were hammered home last week, officially bringing together two iconic brands, Univision and Grupo Televisa, to create the largest Spanish-language media and content company in the world.

This is an incredibly exciting story that will shape the future of our culture in so many positive ways.?The privilege of helping make this long-awaited merger happen, under the leadership of CEO Wade Davis and my fellow board directors, was truly one of those ‘life coming full circle’ moments for me.

If you grew up in a big Mexican American household like I did, you know that you could always count on two things running continuously throughout the day.?The kitchen was always busy, and the television was always playing in the background. Without fail, it would be tuned to Spanish language channels.

Telenovelas and soccer matches, talk shows and news, music videos and game shows, this was the soundtrack to our lives.?It brought the family together around the living room. It helped us remain in touch with our heritage.?It made us feel connected with our grandparents and extended families on the other side of the border.?And it gave us a medium with which to share our little corner of the American experience with fellow Latinos in the United States.

Things have changed since then.

What used to be a niche market is now firmly part of the American mainstream.?As the Latino and Spanish-speaking community continues to thrive, evolve, and weave itself more deeply into the cultural fabric of our nation, it’s no longer just Latin American entertainment.?Its American entertainment.

What it will mean to have one of the biggest, most influential media juggernauts on the planet be a Spanish-language focused company is hard to foresee, and impossible to overstate.?

Its sheer scale will give TelevisaUnivision a truly global reach, delivering high quality original programming to more than 100 million households every day, including more than 60% of the respective TV audiences in both the U.S. and Mexico.

It is the first fully vertically integrated Spanish-speaking media company, with 300,000 hours of content, the most extensive portfolio of IP and sports rights, a raft of broadcast channels and outlets, as well as signed exclusive first-look deals with the most compelling and exciting stars throughout the Spanish-language world.

On top of that, it will also provide the world’s first large-scale streaming service, PrendeTV, specifically developed for the Spanish-speaking audience, tapping into the vast IP vaults of both companies.

This new player on the scene will profoundly reshape the media landscape and play a game-changing role in the red-hot streaming wars that are being fought between the established media companies over who will win the race for talent, content creation, streaming subscriptions, and audience devotion.

The Spanish-language content market represents the last truly ‘open lane’ in the global streaming battle, one that will not remain unclaimed for long.

Take NBCUniversal, for example. Across its portfolio of properties, by far the most viewers and highest engagement comes from content that lives on its Spanish-language app.

Netflix spent north of $200 million in content production in Mexico in 2020 alone, and Disney officially launched its streaming service, Disney+, in Latin America in 2021.

It’s easy to see the reasons behind this gold-rush mentality.

More than twenty million Americans speak Spanish at home. By 2050, the U.S. will be home to more Spanish speakers than any other country, with one in three Americans speaking the language.

Of course, there’s the immense buying power of this market to consider. If Latinos living in the U.S. were an independent country, it would have the seventh largest GDP in the world, at more than $2.7 trillion and climbing.

The emergence of this Latino and Spanish speaking cohort into the American cultural mainstream represents the biggest market opportunity since the arrival of the Baby Boomer Generation.

TelevisaUnivision will be the most important gateway to reach this massive audience, making it a kingmaker in these media battles.?Where it goes, so will the industry. ??

But this platform won’t just be Hollywood’s way of speaking to a diverse audience.?It will the way Spanish-language artists, creators and stars mainstream their genius to an international audience.?The numbers don’t lie; Spanish language entertainment is achieving a truly universal cross-over appeal and is becoming the source of one global phenomenon after the next. ??

The fifth season of Netflix’s crime thriller Money Heist, originally made for a Spanish-language audience, raked in 148 million viewing hours globally when it premiered in December, making it the streaming giant’s most watched show that week. ??

The most important and lasting story that will come out of TelevisaUnivision’s dream factory, perhaps, will be the way the company itself contributes to the overall success story of Spanish-language culture, which will be transformative for generations to come. It offers a wonderful opportunity to build bridges between and within cultures, in a time when we need them most.

It will be the platform from which tomorrow’s megastars will be born.?They will come from the Spanish-speaking world, but they will speak to a global audience. ?

Here in the United States, the sounds of the Spanish spoken word will become indistinguishably part of the overall soundtrack of American life, like it used to be only for families like mine. #TelevisaUnivision