KirchGruppe was a German media group founded by Leo Kirch

Leo Kirch

Leo Kirch was a German media entrepreneur who founded the Kirch Group.-Life:Kirch was born in Volkach, Bavaria, but shortly afterward his family moved to the nearby town of Würzburg. After completing High school he studied marketing and management as well as mathematics at the University of...

. The group collapsed in 2002 largely due to the debts associated with the purchase of sports rights for its television channel

Television channel

A television channel is a physical or virtual channel over which a television station or television network is distributed. For example, in North America, "channel 2" refers to the broadcast or cable band of 54 to 60 MHz, with carrier frequencies of 55.25 MHz for NTSC analog video and...

s and the launch of pay-TV services.

The holding company for the group was Taurus Holding which had three major subsidiaries, KirchMedia, Kirch PayTV and KirchBeteiligung. KirchMedia declared itself insolvent on 8 April 2002, followed by KirchPayTV on 8 May 2002 and finally KirchBeteiligung on 12 June 2002 along with Taurus Holding.

KirchMedia

KirchMedia's main assets were KirchSport, which held the TV rights to the World Cup and other sports; 52.5% of ProSiebenSat.1 Media

ProSiebenSat.1 Media

ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG is a European media conglomerate, operating commercial television, premium pay channels, radio stations and related print businesses. It was formed on October 2, 2000 by merger of German TV broadcasters ProSieben Media AG and Sat.1 SatellitenFernsehen GmbH...

, an owner of major satellite channels; the DSF

Deutsches Sportfernsehen

SPORT1 is a privately owned commercial German television channel. Until April 11, 2010, it was called DSF . It was founded on January 1, 1993 out of the television channel Tele 5 which had become the successor of the music video channel musicbox on January 11, 1988...

 sports channel; TaurusProduktion, a film and TV production group; and TaurusLizenz, owner of fiction and media rights.

KirchMedia was declared insolvent on 8 April 2002.

KirchPayTV

KirchPayTV was majority owned by Taurus Holding, however BSkyB held 22% along with Lehman Brothers

Lehman Brothers

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial services firm. Before declaring bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth largest investment bank in the USA , doing business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales and trading Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (former NYSE ticker...

 (2.4%) and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed (3.12%). The company's main asset was the Premiere

Premiere (pay television network)

Sky Deutschland AG, branded as Sky, is a German media company which operates the first pay television platform in Germany and Austria, offering several channels of digital content via satellite and cable....

 pay-TV network.

KirchPayTV filed for bankruptcy on 8 May 2002.

KirchBeteiligung

KirchBeteiligung's main assets were its majority share of Formula One's commercial rights (through Speed Investments) and its 40.33% stake in Axel Springer AG

Axel Springer AG

Axel Springer AG is one of the largest multimedia companies in Europe, with more than 11,500 employees and with annual revenues of about €2.9 billion. The Company is active in a total of 36 countries, including Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia and Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland...

.

KirchBeteiligung filed for insolvency on 12 June 2002, along with the Taurus Holding parent company of the Kirch Group.