British commercial broadcaster ITV counts on English national team's success at Euro 2012, to "increase its advertisement revenue and help redeem its debt," according to Stephen Morris of BLOOMBERG. England's win over Ukraine Tuesday "attracted the biggest peak audience for any U.K. channel this year with 18.6 million viewers." On May 9, ITV announced that its "advertising revenue will increase as much as 17% this month because of the soccer tournament." CreditSights Inc. technology, media and telecoms analyst Mark Chapman said, "the market has been expecting them to return to investment grade for a very long time, but as the management is fairly new they were still in the process of deciding their long-term strategy for their cash pile." He added: "If England gets to the final, then there's scope for more positive surprise." ITV spokesperson Mary Fagan said that, "The company bought back about £662M ($1B) of loans and bonds in the past three years as part of a strategy to reduce debt and interest payments." In a statement from June 18, ITV said that it is now "offering to redeem its most expensive and shortest-dated debt (BLOOMBERG, 6/22)."
