Sky Group

Sky Group Limited is a British media and telecommunications conglomerate, which is a division of Comcast, and headquartered in London. It has operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Sky is Europe's largest media company and pay-TV broadcaster by revenue (), with 23 million subscribers and more than 31,000 employees as of 2019. The company is primarily involved in satellite television, producing and broadcasting. The current CEO is Dana Strong.

Initially formed in 1990 by the equal merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting, BSkyB became the UK's largest digital pay television company. In 2014, after completing the acquisition of Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, the merged company changed its name to Sky plc.

Prior to November 2018, Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox owned a 39.14% controlling stake in the company; on 9 December 2016, following a previous attempt under News Corporation that was affected by the News International phone hacking scandal, 21st Century Fox announced that it had agreed to buy the remainder of Sky, pending government approval. However, after a bidding war that included the Walt Disney Company (which was, in turn, acquiring most of 21st Century Fox's assets), US media and telecoms conglomerate Comcast acquired the entirety of Sky in 2018 for £17.28 per share. NBCUniversal, which is Sky Group's sister company, is also a division of Comcast.

Before the acquisition by Comcast, Sky was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and had a market capitalisation of approximately £18.75 billion (€26.76 billion) as of 2018.

History

BSkyB

Formation

British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) was formed by the merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting on 2 November 1990. Both companies had begun to struggle financially and were suffering financial losses as they competed against each other for viewers. ''The Guardian'' later characterised the merger as "effectively a takeover by News Corporation". ''Sky TV's launch: 'a wing and a prayer' '', media editor Maggie Brown, ''Guardian'' ''Organgrinder'' blog, 5 February 2009
Retrieved 24 December 2012.

The merger was investigated by the Office of Fair Trading and was cleared a month later since many of the represented views were more concerned about contractual arrangements which had nothing to do with competition. The Independent Broadcasting Authority was not consulted about the deal; after approval, the IBA demanded precise details about the merger, stated they were considering the repercussions of the deal to ultimately determine whether BSB contracts were null and void. On 17 November, the IBA decided to terminate BSB's contract, but not immediately, as it was deemed unfair to 120,000 viewers who had bought BSB devices.

Sam Chisholm was appointed CEO in a bid to reorganise the new company, which, continued to make losses of £10 million per week. The defunct BSB's HQ, Marco Polo House were sold, 39% of the new company's employees were made redundant to leave just under 1000 employees, many of the new senior BSkyB executive roles were given to Sky personnel with many BSB leaving the company. In April the nine Sky/BSB channels had been condensed into five, with EuroSport being dropped soon after the Sky Sports launch. Chisholm also renegotiated the merged company's expensive deals with the Hollywood studios, slashing the minimum guaranteed payments. The defunct '' Marcopolo I'' satellite was sold in December 1993 to Sweden's ''NSAB'', and '' Marcopolo II'' went to Norway's ''Telenor'' in July 1992 after the Independent Television Commission (ITC) was unable to find new companies to take over the BSB licences and compete with BSkyB. News International received 50%, Pearson PLC 17.5%, Chargeurs 17.5%, Granada 12%, Reed International 2% of the new shares in the company.

By September 1991, the weekly losses had been reduced to £1.5M a week, Rupert Murdoch said "there were strong financial marketing and political reason for making the compromise merger instead of letting BSB die. Many of the lessons had been learnt with more than half the running cost of the combined company". Further cuts in losses were a direct result of 313,000 new customers joining during the first half of 1991. By March 1992, BSkyB posted its first operating profits, of £100,000 per week, with £3.8 million weekly from subscriptions and £1 million from advertising, but continued to be burdened with £1.28 billion of debt. Stockbroker firm James Capel forecast BSkyB would still be indebted in 2000.

In the autumn of 1991, talks were held for the broadcast rights for Premier League for a five-year period, from the 1992 season. British television network ITV were the current rights holders for the Football League, and fought hard to gain the new rights. ITV had increased its offer from £18m to £34m per year to obtain the new rights. BSkyB joined forces with the BBC
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