Published July 6
As contestants on reality TV show Love Island dillydally in their pursuit of love, the show’s creator and owner, ITV, has a new relationship to think about: After months of talks, Comcast’s Sky has agreed to buy ITV, an anticipated deal that could have major implications for Britain’s TV and streaming market.
The deal will see Sky buy ITV’s media and entertainment arm, which controls the ITVX streaming platform and ITV’s free-to-air channels, but not ITV’s studio operations. That will instead be separated and enter into a five-year £2.1 billion ($2.8 billion) supply agreement with Sky to “support continued investment in British programming.”
The aim is to create a “commercial streaming champion for the U.K.” to rival the likes of Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube, as the new entity’s combined reach would account for around 20% of all in-home viewing in the U.K., second to the BBC and ahead of YouTube, according to Sky.
“The U.K. media market is undergoing a profound and rapid transformation, and as competition for audiences intensifies, scale matters more than ever in order to compete with global streaming giants and YouTube in the U.K.,” Sky said in a statement.
Of course, Sky is owned by U.S. giant Comcast — which, in another major announcement last week, said it would spin off NBCUniversal and Sky in a move that would create a separate streaming and entertainment-focused company to better compete with, you guessed it, the likes of Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube.
The acquisition will likely be heavily scrutinized by Britain’s competition authorities and is not expected to close until at least next year.
