{"id":19638,"date":"2025-06-27T17:39:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T17:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/19638\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T17:39:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T17:39:14","slug":"what-comcasts-sky-sale-to-rtl-means-for-the-european-streaming-biz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/19638\/","title":{"rendered":"What Comcast’s Sky sale to RTL means for the European streaming biz"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRTL<\/a> Group, Europe\u2019s biggest television company, made a major bid Friday to challenge the untrammeled dominance of the U.S. streaming giants, announcing a deal <\/a>to acquire Comcast<\/a>\u2018s Germany pay-TV network Sky<\/a> Deutschland.<\/p>\n

\n\tRTL got Sky on the cheap, paying just \u20ac150 million ($175 million) upfront plus an additional payment based on share price performance, up to a maximum of \u20ac377 million ($442 million). Against that, RTL boss Thomas Rabe said the merger would deliver \u20ac250 million ($293 million) in synergy savings over the next three years.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf approved by antitrust regulators, the deal would combine Sky\u2019s 5 million+ subscribers across Germany-speaking Europe with the more than 6 million customers for RTL\u2019s in-house streamer, RTL+, to create Germany\u2019s third-largest streaming company, behind Netflix<\/a> and Amazon Prime but ahead of Disney+. It will also, says Enders Analysis analyst Fran\u00e7ois Godard, position RTL as the \u201cunavoidable\u201d partner for streamers looking to launch, or expand, in Europe\u2019s largest TV market.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHBO Max is launching in Germany next year; they won\u2019t be able to do it alone,\u201d says Godard. \u201cThe logical move now would be for them to partner with RTL\/Sky. Disney+ needs growth [in Germany]. Bundling with RTL would make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile RTL focused on the importance of the Sky deal for its German streaming business, Godard noted that the push to consolidate is also driven by competition in the advertising market. \u201cThe streamers have begun carrying ads, competing with the traditional broadcasters,\u201d he notes, \u201cand YouTube, of course, is a huge threat for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSky is a minor player in the German advertising market \u2014 of Sky Deutschland\u2019s \u20ac2 billion ($2.34 billion) in sales last year, just 12 percent, or \u20ac240 million ($281 million), came from ad sales \u2014\u00a0which should make it easier to secure approval for the RTL deal. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBoth groups are highly complementary, and we would expect the combined unit to take a much bigger
share of the German advertising market five years down the line as it aims to maximize the
monetisation of its content,\u201d Bernstein Societe Generale analyst Annick Maas wrote in a Friday report.<\/p>\n

\n\tRTL Group CEO Thomas Rabe, who called the Sky deal \u201ctransformational,\u201d has been pursuing a \u201cnational champions\u201d strategy in Europe, pursuing M&A deals to bulk up RTL operations in individual territories to achieve scale in both free- and pay-TV. Rabe failed to make that work in France. There, a planned merger between RTL\u2019s M6 network and market leader TF1 was blocked by regulators<\/a>. After a similar move was derailed in the Netherlands, RTL sold its Dutch operation RTL Netherlands to Belgian group DPG Media. [That deal, worth \u20ac1.1 billion ($1.3 billion), was just approved.]<\/p>\n

\n\tRabe\u2019s logic: Get big or get out, has become the rallying call among Europe\u2019s traditional broadcasters who are seeing their market share erode amid competition from streamers. RTL\u2019s Sky buy comes just a week after another milestone deal, in which TF1 agreed to license<\/a> its live broadcasts and on-demand content to Netflix in France, boosting its reach.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe [RTL-Sky] move clearly highlights the ongoing and fundamental challenges facing traditional providers,\u201d PP Foresight founder and analyst Paolo Pescatore tells THR. \u201cWe are now moving into a new phase where scale is key, as seen in other verticals. Attention will now look at other markets, such as Italy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Comcast, \u201cit\u2019s a small transaction, so it\u2019s probably not material one way or the other,\u201d MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett tells THR.\u00a0\u201cBut it can only be a welcome sign that Comcast is unwinding even a small part of a larger Sky business that never really made sense for Comcast to own in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSome are wondering if Comcast\u2019s Sky Italia could be next on the auction block. \u201cAttention will now look at other markets, such as Italy,\u201d says Pescatore. But Sky management has continued to invest in the Italian business and lauded its operating momentum.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn a much larger scale, leading British commercial broadcaster ITV \u2014 $4 billion in revenue last year \u2014 has also seen suitors emerge, with RTL among the potential buyers, alongside Abu Dhabi-backed investment fund RedBird IMI, run by former CNN chief Jeff Zucker, and French media giant Banijay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RTL Group, Europe\u2019s biggest television company, made a major bid Friday to challenge the untrammeled dominance of the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[18422,171,1801,4659,17674,4540,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-19638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-comcast","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-international","11":"tag-netflix","12":"tag-rtl","13":"tag-sky","14":"tag-tv","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114756554803851274","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}