Univisión's sports network presently airs 24/7 World Cup programming, including the games, commentary, spectator reaction, highlights, and up-to-date coverage of all the players and team involved. But, the largest Spanish-language broadcast television network, which offers Hispanic and Latino audiences endless hours of telenovelas, drama series, sports, reality shows, variety series, sitcoms, news programming and Spanish-language features, may be up for sale. Rumor has it Univisión's private equity owners have been in talks with numerous major media companies, such as CBS Corp. and Time Warner, to sell for more than $20 billion.

The New York City-headquartered company's revenue rose 10.5 percent to $621.1 million for the first quarter, which ended on March 31, due to an upswing of TV advertising spending.

However, the Univisión network's ratings in the 18-49 demographic have plummeted 23 percent since the beginning of the 2013-14 season, according to Nielsen. Experts have said that the dip in ratings can be credited to two underperforming shows.

Univisión operates Univisión Network, Univisión Deportes Network, 68 stations, 62 TV stations and other digital properties, and has been looking to issue those shares publicly. In the past two years alone, Univisión' has launched nine cable channels, bringing their total to 12. They also launched an online TV network called "Flama."

Saban Capital's Haim Saban, Madison Dearborn Partners, Providence Equity Partners, TPG and Thomas H. Lee Partners bought Univisión back in 2007 for $13.7 billion. According to reports, its owners have considered selling to Group Televisa, a Mexican media company that has licensed its content to Univisión to distribute in the U.S. The Federal Communications Commission once barred foreign companies from claiming a majority stake in U.S. broadcast networks, though they've become more lax with restrictions; stakes that exceed 25 percent must be examined on a case-by-case basis.

Televisa acquired 5 percent of Univisión for $1.2 billion back in 2010, along with content licensing that included soccer games and Spanish-language soap opera dramas. The Mexican company also received rights to convert debt into an additional 30 percent stake; however that depends on changes to regulations that cap foreign ownership. Also, Televisa has yet to show explicit interest in buying Univisión.

Comcast, the largest cable company in the U.S. and owner of NBC Universal, and Univisión's chief competitor, Telemundo, has a deal to buy rival Time Warner Cable for $45 billion, which Univisión's CEO Randy Falco believes is dangerous and could "be bad for competition and most importantly bad for Hispanic audiences."

"The risk of this merger really is not hypothetical, especially for providers like us who offer networks and services that compete with NBC, Telemundo and even NBC Sports," he said, also making point of saying that by collecting Time Warner Cable, Comcast would become the "top TV distributor in 19 out of the top 20 Hispanic markets," delivering more than 60 Latino networks and English. According to him, this gives the cable operator "staggering influence over Hispanic consumers."

Falco has been outspoken about the implications of the Comcast-TWC deal, and in the past has made a point of saying that Telemudo is the only major pay-TV operator that doesn't distribute Univisión's sports network.

"Either Comcast doesn't understand that soccer is a passion point for Hispanics or they don't support competitors who have competing services," Falco said.

The sale of Univisión Communications occurs alongside a scandal that involves one of their popular radio stations, KSCA-FM (101.9) in downtown Los Angeles. A programming executive at the station was accused of tampering with Nielsen measurement devices, skewing ratings data for more than a year. The executive has since been terminated from his position. Nielsen has said in a statement that it plans to conduct "impact analysis" to determine the extent of the issue, and will likely revise their system.

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