What could Sky’s buyout of ITV mean for football-watching in the UK?

Given the announcement dropped on the day of England’s 3-2 World Cup round-of-16 victory over Mexico, and in the early hours of the morning to boot, you may have been forgiven for missing it.

The news was that Sky had agreed to buy UK broadcaster ITV’s media and entertainment arm, including its free-to-air channels and streaming service, in a deal worth up to £1.6billion (US$2.1 billion).

It’s important to note the transaction has not yet been completed and is subject to regulatory approval, and if it goes through, completion is not expected until the second half of next year — but it would represent a major shakeup in the UK television industry if it does.

In its press release detailing news of the deal, Sky said the partnership would “create a commercial streaming champion for the UK”. But what does it all mean for televised sport? And how could it impact the way football is shown and consumed by audiences in Britain?

The Athletic spoke to numerous industry experts to try to find out.

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What’s in this for both Sky and ITV when it comes to sport?

“For Sky, if we focus on the sports perspective, you’re looking at two main positives,” Dan Harraghy, a sports media analyst at Ampere Analysis, tells The Athletic.

“Firstly, being able to move certain bits of content, or certain matches, onto ITV channels can act as a bit of a shop window for Sky coverage.

“Then, with the reach of something like an ITV, being able to move content there attracts more eyeballs and therefore you’re going to generate greater ad revenue, so the advertisers are going to really like that.

“So there is a kind of a monetisable play there, as well as a strategic one. It also creates quite a strong offering when the combined entity goes into rights negotiations, because I think a lot of rights holders do value the combination of revenue with reach.”

For ITV, meanwhile, the major benefit is access to Sky’s greater financial resources.

ITV said it can “already reach around 40million people every week and serves more than 16.5m monthly digital users. Combined with Sky, the business would account for around 20 per cent of all in-home viewing in the UK, second to the BBC and ahead of YouTube”.

In terms of revenue, Paolo Pescatore, a media and technology analyst at PP Foresight, tells The Athletic that Sky generated £10.4billion in revenue in 2024, compared with £2.1bn for ITV’s media and entertainment arm. “That makes Sky roughly five times the revenue scale of the ITV business it is acquiring, even though ITV brings significant incremental mass-audience reach,” Pescatore explains.

Meanwhile, Harraghy says that in terms of financial resources, Sky spends around £2billion annually on sports rights, while Ampere Analysis estimates ITV has paid roughly £200m this year.

“You’re part of an entity that has deeper pockets,” Harraghy says. “Being able to work in conjunction with Sky, when negotiating rights, for example, puts you in a position of strength.”

Tim Westcott, who leads Omdia’s research on TV and video programming and channel distribution, tells The Athletic he wasn’t surprised by the news, as ITV has been the subject of takeover speculation for some time. “But most people probably thought the main interest was in ITV studios, rather than the broadcasting bit, because the broadcasting has really not been growing at all in terms of revenue,” he says. 

As part of the deal, Sky will acquire channels ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and ITV Quiz and streaming service ITVX. It will also become an indirect 20 per cent shareholder in ITV when the purchase is finalised. The £1.6billion deal consists of £1.2bn in cash, Sky-owned Love Productions (maker of shows including The Great British Bake-Off, valued at £200m) and up to £200m in performance-related earn-outs.

Asked about the thinking behind the deal, Westcott says Sky was eager to develop its advertising sales, but generally has relatively small audiences compared with ITV.

“I think really the logic of the deal is for Sky to bring the content it owns to a wider audience and monetise it through advertising, as well as its subscription model,” he said. “And from ITV’s point of view, there’s a lot of attractive content that they could take that Sky already has the rights to and exploit it on free-to-air.”

David Murray, a commercial sport and negotiation consultant, says Sky, which is owned by U.S. media company Comcast, is “not the beast it used to be”, while the traditional TV advertising business is struggling because viewing habits were shifting to digital and online.

“So, in those circumstances, it makes sense, because you can combine resources and save costs,” he tells The Athletic. “In theory, it makes the company more efficient, and it reduces competition in the marketplace as well.”

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So what could this look like in reality?

Announcing the news last month, Sky said in its press release that “the combined business will deliver more sport free-to-air on ITV services than ever before”.

“There is a possibility of more matches on free-to-air,” Westcott says. “If Sky can carve out some of its rights from pay TV and put them on free TV, without undermining the consumer who’s paying a subscription for Sky Sports or Now TV, but bring the bigger audience that there would be to events, whether it’s the EFL or Premier League, that’s what they would aim to do.

“The Premier League and the clubs wouldn’t want to undermine the fact they have very successfully marketed the Premier League as a pay product by putting too much of it on free TV. At the same time, common sense would say that giving the clubs more exposure and bringing in less dedicated fans, you would think the Premier League would see that as a positive.”

Harraghy says there was an opportunity for Sky to show both live and highlights-package content on ITV’s free-to-air service. Under its public broadcasting licence, the latter must remain free-to-air until 2034.

“There is an opportunity for Premier League matches to move in front of the paywall,” he says. “Strategically for Sky, the consideration is how many games could you put there for it to be worth doing — both as a shop window for Sky’s coverage and to generate additional advertising income — without compromising subscription revenue.

“So, if you put half of the matches free to air, for example, suddenly people are just going to unsubscribe because they’ve got their sports content free to air. There’s a middle ground in there somewhere for them to consider.

“There’s an opportunity to also put highlights programming there as well. It could be an additional competitor to something like (the BBC’s) Match of the Day, being able to put digital highlights and clips on ITVX as well.”

Mike Darcey, formerly of Sky and now the author of the Tellynomics blog, says it could lead to a few Premier League matches on free TV in the future, but tells The Athletic that consumers would likely see a “taster, not a flood, and expect a lot of promotion of Sky Sports”.

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So what sports could we see on which channels?

In terms of its sport offering, ITV currently holds the rights to several ‘crown jewel’ events, including the FIFA World Cup, UEFA European Championship, rugby union’s World Cup final and horse racing’s Grand National. Under rules established by the UK government in 1996, these are among the major sporting occasions that must be made available on free-to-air television in Britain.

ITV also holds rights to several other major events not on that list, including rugby union’s Six Nations and World Cup (excluding the latter’s final), the FA Cup (excluding the final) and English Football League.

This summer, the BBC reported that the government was considering new laws to ensure UK viewers could continue to access streaming and catch-up coverage of these ‘crown jewel’ events for free.

However, as the second-biggest beneficiary of listed events, Murray said there was a risk that being owned by Sky turns ITV into a ‘Trojan Horse’.

“It could push and test the limits of listed events with the ultimate goal of undermining them,” he says. “It also makes an ITV-only bid for the World Cup or Euros more likely, with some content ending up on Sky. For the BBC, the risk of losing those ‘crown jewels’, potentially as well as Match of the Day, makes them a clear loser of such a deal. So there’s some interesting strategic elements there about what happens to those big listed events moving forward.”

Darcey agrees there could be cause for concern about a campaign to relax some of the ‘crown jewel’ rules. “I’m not sure that every single game in a 64-team FIFA World Cup will remain listed, so Curacao vs Iceland might not always be free,” he suggested.

However, any potential change would depend on how the regulations currently in place are interpreted and enforced.

A further scenario that could play out is Sky choosing to put certain events currently broadcast on ITV, such as a major Rugby World Cup clash or a game in that sport’s annual Six Nations tournament, behind its paywall.

Harraghy says a potential worry for consumers is that, among the major sports broadcasters in the UK, a Sky/ITV deal could impact subscription service TNT Sports, potentially weakening competition in the market.

“If Sky suddenly becomes a bit of a standalone entity in the UK market, then that’s never a good sign for fans in terms of price points,” he says. “There’s less incentive for them to compete with anyone to drop prices.”

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Is this about battling digital streaming platforms?

Sky explained in its press release how the UK 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 UK”.

So is the real story here less about traditional television and more about the battle with the new players in town — such as Amazon Prime, Disney+, Netflix and Apple TV?

“The threat to Sky is from your big digital global platforms that can outbid them if they so choose,” Murray says. “Sport is unique and brings people in year on year, so it potentially becomes a differentiator.”

For Westcott, one of the major disruptors is YouTube.

“YouTube has really got heavily involved in sports, and it does have a huge footprint in terms of the amount of time per day that people spend watching it,” he says. “So I do think that Sky looking to buy a broadcaster is certainly part of that concern about what the future of its business is. Sky has to do something to respond to these global players.”

Harraghy says that, in the UK, we haven’t yet had streamers acquiring sports rights to the same extent as in other markets.

“But we’re starting to see it a little bit more, with Paramount taking the Champions League rights in the UK (from 2027 to 2031), for example,” he says. “That’s the direction of travel in the market. So a combined Sky and ITV entity creates quite a strong proposition in a time when we’re seeing increased competition for eyeballs more broadly across streaming.”

Darcey describes the looming deal as a strong response to the global digital streamers. “In that battle, I think that serious domestic focus and scale, combining strength in subscription and advertising, with a strong spine in sport, is a serious player on the field,” he says.

Francois Godard, a media analyst, agrees. “Without the rise of streamers, this wouldn’t happen,” he tells The Athletic. “Clearly, there must be a response to the streaming channels, and part of this challenge is you run with more than one leg.”

For now, all eyes will turn to the UK’s competition regulator to scrutinise the Sky/ITV deal, which could significantly reshape the British media landscape.