Sky Buys ITV’s Broadcast and Streaming Arm for £1.6bn
Comcast-owned Sky is buying ITV’s Media and Entertainment division — the ITV channels and the ITVX streaming platform — for up to £1.6bn, in the biggest takeover in British broadcasting history. The deal, first mooted last November, creates the country’s largest commercial broadcaster and is pitched as building a British challenger to the American streaming giants. ITV retains its Studios production business. Competition and media regulators must now approve the deal.
Free-to-air commercial television built around ITV has been a fixture of national life for seventy years; its channels passing to a US-owned pay-TV company is a structural moment for British media, and it arrives with the political shop unattended — a caretaker government, no permanent culture secretary decision-maker, and an incoming administration that has signalled interest in media plurality. The CMA and Ofcom reviews will decide the real terms: news provision obligations, regional programming, and whether ITVX’s free tier survives. Comcast’s own mooted break-up adds a second layer of ownership uncertainty. Watch the regulators’ timetables and the incoming government’s first comment.