---
title: "AT&T → DirecTV"
url: "https://mahouse.world/ma-deals/at-t-buy-directv-2014"
type: "M&A deal"
year: "2014"
---

# AT&T → DirecTV

AT&T paid $48.5bn in equity — $67.1bn including debt — for DirecTV, the largest US satellite-TV provider, to bundle television with its phone and broadband network; five years later it wrote down the video business by $15.5bn, and by July 2025 it had sold its entire stake in DirecTV to the private-equity firm TPG.

About $67bn including debt; AT&T began unwinding the satellite business six years later.

- **Acquirer:** AT&T (United States)
- **Target:** DirecTV (United States)
- **Value:** $48.5B
- **Announced:** May 2014
- **Completed:** July 2015
- **Sector:** Media
- **Deal type:** acquisition

## Why it mattered

On 18 May 2014 AT&T agreed to pay $95 a DirecTV share: $28.50 in cash and $66.50 in AT&T stock, protected by a collar. DirecTV brought more than 20 million US customers, more than 18 million in Latin America and the exclusive pay-TV rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket package. AT&T argued that video, broadband and mobile sold together would make it a stronger alternative to cable, and promised cost savings above $1.6bn a year by the third year and, once the deal closed, faster broadband for 15 million mostly rural customer locations.

The Federal Communications Commission approved the deal on 24 July 2015 with conditions lasting four years: fibre to 12.5 million customer locations, gigabit service for eligible schools and libraries, a ban on usage-based allowances that discriminated against online video rivals, disclosure of internet interconnection agreements, discounted broadband for low-income households and an independent compliance officer. With the Department of Justice also satisfied, AT&T completed the purchase the same day.

## What it left behind

AT&T kept going into media: it launched the streaming service DirecTV Now in November 2016 and bought Time Warner, a deal announced at $108.7bn, in June 2018. The strategy did not last. In the fourth quarter of 2020 AT&T recorded a $15.5bn impairment of goodwill and other assets in its video business, and in February 2021 it moved DirecTV, U-verse TV and DirecTV Stream into a new company with TPG at an enterprise value of $16.25bn, keeping 70%. WarnerMedia was merged into Warner Bros. Discovery in 2022. In September 2024 AT&T agreed to sell its remaining 70% to TPG, noting $19bn of cash distributions received since 2021 and $7.6bn more to come; the sale closed on 2 July 2025. DirecTV's own attempt to buy Dish from EchoStar, announced the same day in 2024, was abandoned after EchoStar's bondholders opposed it. As of September 2026 DirecTV is wholly owned by TPG. Scale in a distribution technology is worth paying for only while customers still want that technology; bought at the peak, the same scale becomes the size of the write-down.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirecTV