Sky Goes Shopping in Europe’s Pay-TV Market:
Futuresource Consulting
While Pay-TV merger mania grips the USA, on the other side of the Atlantic BSkyB plans to pay 21st Century Fox around $9.1 billion for its shares in Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia, bringing it toe-to-toe with Liberty Global in the battle for subscribers in Europe.
A new free ‘Perspective’ report from Futuresource Consulting explores the landscape and weighs up the implications of the deal. The report explores subscribers, revenues, assets and the implied strategic intent. Here are the key take-homes:
- BSkyB’s European play will bring it up to 20 million subscribers, matching major US networks in scale and with about 30% share of Europe’s Pay-TV market.
- There may be opportunities for new Pay-TV growth in Germany, Austria and Italy, but the deal will not immediately open up Broadband/Voice network services provisioning, which have contributed to Sky’s growth in the UK in recent years.
- The deal will allow further development of the Sky brand internationally and yield synergies in content acquisition, infrastructure, subscriber equipment and software provisioning.
- Sky and Liberty will jointly control 44% of Europe’s $50bn Pay-TV market, with the next largest share Canal+ at about 8%: there is clearly room for further market agglomeration.
- As well as getting about $7bn in cash, 21st Century Fox will retain its 39% shareholding in the enlarged Sky entity.
The full report is available for download free from the Futuresource website, at www.futuresource-consulting.com.
Futuresource Consulting is a specialist research and knowledge-based consulting company, providing organisations with insight into professional display technologies, consumer electronics, digital imaging, entertainment media, broadcast, storage media, education technology and IT. With a heritage stretching back to the 1980s, the company delivers in-depth analysis and forecasts on a global scale, advising on strategic positioning, market trends, competitive forces and technological developments. www.futuresource-consulting.com
