Sky CEO Is “Quite Optimistic” on HBO Pact in U.K., Signals No Sale for Germany Unit With “Potential”

Georg Szalai
·5 min read
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Comcast-owned European TV giant Sky is optimistic about being able to continue its role as the home of HBO in the U.K. and bullish about its business opportunity in Germany, CEO Dana Strong told an industry conference on Wednesday. Her comments come during a year that has seen recurring market chatter about a possible sale of the firm’s Sky Deutschland unit in Germany and discussions about Warner Bros. Discovery’s possible future strategy for HBO in the U.K., including possibly its own streaming service.

In a keynote session at the Royal Television Society (RTS) Cambridge Convention on Wednesday, Strong answered questions about both topics and discussed her management team’s strategy for Sky, the reasoning behind their shift away from satellite to IP delivery, and more.

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“Warner is up in 2026,” the Sky CEO said. “We have a very long history of partnership with Warner, and we think we have represented that content extremely well and built brands and fandom and audiences for that content very well. I think we’re really well known for creating environments where our partners can get more economic benefit by working with us than working against us.”

She added: “We bring audiences efficiently to content, and we allow everybody to share in the economic benefits of that, including the consumer who gets to pay (a) better price because we’re able to aggregate services much like we aggregate Netflix in, we aggregate the Paramount+’s service in, Warner is in, all of our Universal content is in. So we’re quite optimistic that the logic of doing business together so that both parties have a better outcome and a market will [mean we will] be able to find our way through that.”

Concluded Strong about the Warner Bros. Discovery and HBO content partnership: “We’ve got a lot of years ahead of us before we really confront that.”

Asked about a potential sale of Sky Deutschland, Strong said on Wednesday: “Germany’s got a lot of potential.” She also highlighted the recent announcement of a new CEO for that business unit, saying that this is “all the evidence that you need that we’re in it.”

Asked about reports over the past year that the Sky Deutschland unit may be for sale, Strong had earlier also said: “We are fully aligned across Europe, but we tend to approach each market depending on where the maturity curve, the consumer and the regulation really optimize our performance.” She added that Sky is present as a brand in six countries, in addition to 22 further markets where it has a presence via the SkyShowtime streaming joint venture of Comcast and Paramount Global.

Different markets are in different states of maturity and development, she highlighted, noting that Sky in the U.K. has a fully integrated suite of services, including home insurance, while Italy was about halfway through the maturity curve, and Germany was a little earlier in its development. “We are fully aligned across Europe,” but “optimize” the approach for each market and its maturity level.

“Germany has been a notoriously difficult market for pay TV,” Strong said. “I think everybody knows that the German consumer has always gravitated towards free content. What’s amazing is that in Germany, there’s never been a bigger and better time for pay TV in Germany. We are at a peak in terms of paying households, it’s gone up by 60 percent in the last five years. And that’s really as a result of a lot of growth in streaming. So when we look at the German market, we think that in that market, the opportunity for our streaming service … still has some really important potential.”

The Comcast acquisition of Sky five years ago was “quite visionary,” and the management team had a “prescient vision,” Strong also argued at the RTS conference.

Highlighting that the Sky business really benefits from Comcast’s scale, she noted: “Comcast generated more free cash flow than Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney combined in 2022. So it gives us a very important and solid foundation from which to make investments in order to innovate for the Sky business.”

In 2021, Strong’s first year in charge at Sky, the company unveiled a broadband-powered TV set, dubbed Sky Glass, that doesn’t require a satellite dish to access its full suite of services and has new features, including a playlist that compiles content from across Sky and streaming services. Strong has said that this allows Sky to bet on iPhone-like revenue opportunities as the broadband-powered TV sets offer monthly payment plans.

Strong has also continued to expand Sky’s original content spending. The Sky Studios Elstree production complex North of London will bring $3 billion in productions to the U.K. over five years, she has touted.

In her 2021 RTS Cambridge Convention appearance, Strong had vowed to expand Sky’s offerings across continental Europe in the coming years and increase diversity. “There is no doubt that we can all do better” on diversity, she said back then. “We have got to keep making progress. I feel really passionately about it actually. Creating an environment and a culture where multiple, different voices, multiple, different contexts, multiple, different, diverse backgrounds can be heard is one of my main jobs as a leader.”

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