{"id":122071,"date":"2025-11-07T01:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T01:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/122071\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T01:24:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T01:24:08","slug":"sky-owner-comcast-in-talks-to-buy-itvs-broadcasting-arm-for-2bn-itv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/122071\/","title":{"rendered":"Sky owner Comcast in talks to buy ITV\u2019s broadcasting arm for \u00a32bn | ITV"},"content":{"rendered":"

The parent company of Sky<\/a> is in talks to buy ITV\u2019s broadcasting business for about \u00a32bn, in a move that would upend the British television landscape.<\/p>\n

The US media company Comcast, which owns assets including Universal Studios and bought Rupert Murdoch\u2019s Sky for \u00a330bn in 2018<\/a>, is in talks to buy ITV\u2019s broadcasting arm, which includes its TV channels and streaming service ITVX.<\/p>\n

A deal would not involve its production arm ITV<\/a> Studios \u2013 the maker of shows including Love Island, I\u2019m a Celebrity and the hit drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office \u2013 which has been the subject of separate takeover talks.<\/p>\n

It comes two decades after James Murdoch made an audacious move<\/a> to become the biggest shareholder in the UK\u2019s largest commercial free-to-air broadcaster. Rupert\u2019s youngest son acquired a 17.9% stake in ITV for \u00a3940m in 2006.<\/p>\n

Sky, which took the stake to block a move by Richard Branson<\/a> to buy ITV after the cable companies NTL and Telewest merged to create Virgin Media, was ultimately forced by regulators to sell its holding.<\/p>\n

ITV\u2019s largest single shareholder<\/a>, Liberty Global, which jointly owns Virgin Media O2 with Spanish telecoms operator Telef\u00f3nica, halved its 10% stake in ITV last month.<\/p>\n

The broadcaster\u2019s value has slumped to \u00a32.5bn, about 75% below levels seen a decade ago, as the Netflix-led streaming revolution has hammered the stocks of traditional broadcasters.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, ITV reported that it would \u201ctemporarily\u201d cut \u00a335m from its budgets<\/a> as it deals the poor macroeconomic environment and advertiser uncertainty ahead of the budget later this month.<\/p>\n

The company said it expected advertising revenues, which still account for most of its income, to fall by 9% in the key fourth-quarter advertising period in the run-up to Christmas.<\/p>\n

ITV is being advised by the banks Robey Warshaw and Morgan Stanley.<\/p>\n

The performance of ITV Studios has led analysts to argue that the production arm alone could be worth more than the broadcasting business, which includes some of the UK\u2019s most popular channels.<\/p>\n

Since buying Sky at a premium in a bidding war in 2018, Comcast has written down the value of the business by billions of dollars<\/a>, mainly due to the poor performance of European operations in Italy and Germany.<\/p>\n

Sky UK, which controls rights to crown-jewel assets including most of the rights to the Premier League, remains highly profitable.<\/p>\n

In June, Comcast agreed to sell its German pay-TV business to RTL<\/a>, the former owner of Channel 5 in the UK, for \u20ac150m.<\/p>\n

ITV, Sky and Comcast<\/a> declined to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The parent company of Sky is in talks to buy ITV\u2019s broadcasting business for about \u00a32bn, in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-122071","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}