Rupert Murdoch eyes ‘Sky Europe’

May 11, 2014 09.52 Europe/London By Robert Briel


Rupert MurdochRupert Murdoch is reportedly looking to combine British Sky Broadcasting Group with Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, by acquiring shares held by 21st Century Fox.

Bloomberg broke the news about a possible combination of the three main European Sky platforms quoting anonymous sources.

According to the report, followed by a similar one in the Financial Times, it is still very early days for such a takeover.

At the moment, Murdoch holds a 39% stake in BSkyB, while Fox holds 55% of Sky Deutschland and 100% of Sky Italia. In 2010 Murdoch tried to take control of BSkyB, but had to drop the bid amid the phone-hacking scandal.

In the UK, Sky had 15 million subscribers at the end of March 2014, while Sky D had 3.73 million subscribers, and Sky Italia had 4.75 million. A combined Sky Europe would serve around 23.5 million customers, but such a deal would almost certainly spark the interest of European regulators.

The three European Sky companies already share a common technology platform, but a combination would create a very big player on the content rights market for sports, movies and TV series.