By Paul Sandle
LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s ITV is in preliminary talks to sell its television business to Comcast-owned Sky for 1.6 billion pounds ($2.15 billion) as both look to compete with Netflix, Amazon and Disney.
A combination of Britain’s biggest public service commercial channel and its leading pay-TV business would account for more than 70% of the UK television advertising market, analysts said.
It would also create scale in streaming, a source close to the talks said, adding the groups had a “deep understanding” of British audiences across sport, entertainment, drama and news.
ITV’s shares, which have traded at levels they were at 13 years ago, were up 16% to 79 pence on news of a possible deal.
REGULATORY SCRUTINY
A sale would not include ITV’s Studios business, which makes “Coronation Street” and “Love Island” for its own channels and shows like ‘Rivals’ for Disney+.
UBS said regulatory scrutiny was one reason to be cautious about a deal going ahead given the TV advertising dominance and that it would see ITV owned by a U.S. group.
ITV’s TV business, which comprises its free-to-air channels and ITVX streaming platform, has been hit by a shift to digital platforms as well as ad market weakness.
Meta and Google captured about 60% of UK ad spend in 2024, while Google’s YouTube is the second most watched service, behind only the BBC, regulator Ofcom said in July.
Former ITV chairman Peter Bazalgette told the BBC on Friday that regulators needed to redefine the ad market to take account of the changing landscape.
Sky, founded in 1990 by a merger of Rupert Murdoch’s pay TV company with a rival satellite broadcaster, grew to become Europe’s biggest pay-TV group, helped by its sports line-up, including Premier League soccer.
NBC Universal owner Comcast bought Sky in 2018 for just over 30 billion pounds.
TOUGH AD MARKET
ITV said on Thursday its ad revenue would be 9% lower in the last quarter, despite the success of ITVX, which had 16.4 million monthly users in the first half of 2025.
Selling broadcast would reduce reliance on advertising and let ITV focus on content it can sell globally.
“Many investors would prefer if ITV only consisted of the Studios arm,” said AJ Bell’s head of markets Dan Coatsworth.
Reuters and others have previously reported interest in ITV’s Studios from Abu Dhabi-backed RedBird IMI and French media group Banijay,
ITV CEO Carolyn McCall said in July that there were frequent conversations over potential deals within the industry.
($1 = 0.7451 pounds)
(Reporting by Raechel Thankam Job in Bengaluru and Paul Sandle in London; Additional reporting by Sarah Young, Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Alexander Smith)
