Mediapro maintains its commitment to Barcelona after opening a new chapter with Sergio Oslé and Carlos Núñez at the helm of the company. Despite leading the business from Madrid, the group’s registered and main headquarters will remain in the Catalan capital. In Barcelona, 1,100 people work, out of a total of 5,000, and the goal is to continue driving the business from the city where it was born more than 30 years ago.
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The company is at a moment of reinvention after the departure of co-founder Tatxo Benet, who was president and CEO until last year and a 5% shareholder until July, a stake he sold to the majority shareholder, the Chinese group Orient Hontai Capital. (Jaume Roures left the business in 2023).
In this new chapter, the group will change its identity: it will abandon the Mediapro brand and will be called Imagina. It is not a name unfamiliar to the group, as the building of the headquarters, located in the 22@ district, bears the same name.
The company expects to generate 100 million euros in cash flow in three years
From now on, the company wants to recover the growth path after years weighed down by million-euro losses. Last year they set a record of -286 million euros. In a meeting with employees, executives explained that they expect to generate positive cash flow this year and boost EBITDA, or gross profit, from 63 to 100 million. As for revenues, they will remain more or less stable around 1,000 million euros.
Looking ahead to the next three years, the goal is to maintain turnover at this level. The figure could even be a little lower, as the management team’s intention is to sell unprofitable assets and acquire strategic businesses. No major mergers or acquisitions are planned.
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In this context marked by cost reduction, the company applied a redundancy plan at the beginning of this year that involved the dismissal of 189 workers, 18% of the workforce in Spain. For now, more measures of this type are ruled out. The debt, of 525 million euros, was refinanced in 2024 and its payment was postponed until 2029.
The focus will be on cutting costs and accelerating the growth of the group’s four divisions: broadcasting and audiovisual production, which contributes 45% of revenues; content creation (20-25%), sports rights management (15%) and the physical and audiovisual experiences business. “The group expects to generate 100 million euros of free cash flow in the next three years that will be dedicated to financing new initiatives,” says a press release.
Mediapro is a giant in audiovisual production and sports content broadcasting. It works for entities such as FIFA, UEFA, NBA, Concacaf, Conmebol or FIBA. It operates more than a dozen national leagues and sporting events and carries out more than 4,000 events per year. It also creates audiovisual content for clients such as Netflix, Disney, Movistar, Prime, HBO or RTVE.
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