1236 Tuesday 8 January 2019

It was announced yesterday that STV had inked a five year strategic deal with Sky to broadcast the Scottish broadcaster’s channels on Sky including their VOD platform, the STV Player. The partnership includes support for future functionality that could include cloud recording of programming. The significance of the deal is that it could pave way for ITV to follow suit with a similar deal of its own.

ITV’s current deal with Sky for the broadcasting of their channels is set to expire at the end of this year and following the unease of the ITV-Virgin Media deal last July, the pay TV operator may be keen to tie up loose ends without dragging their heels. When ITV and Virgin Media settled their differences in 2018, it was worth an estimated £35m to the former, and based on this, analysts at Liberum Capital have valued a deal with Sky at approximately £120m.

As news crossed the wires this morning, stock in ITV.L jumped over 5% and currently sits at 132.17 (+4.82%).


