Sky has bought ITV for $2.1 billion, and now the bosses of both companies are trying to explain why it will still work. ITV CEO Carolyn McCall and Sky content chief Cecile Frot-Coutaz spoke separately at the Royal Television Society convention in London, and both kept circling the same idea: the competition is too strong to survive without bigger deals.
The deal is still waiting on approval from the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority. That approval is not guaranteed, and neither boss pretended it was. Instead, they argued that the deal is necessary because everyone else is buying.
How Much Streaming Is Out There
Five years ago, there were 200,000 hours of streaming content available to audiences. Today, that number has more than doubled to 900,000 hours, excluding YouTube. McCall pointed to that growth as proof the market is getting crowded, not smaller.
“The competition is ferocious.”
McCall said that directly, and Frot-Coutaz agreed. The two executives kept coming back to the same list of reasons the deal makes sense: technology, AI, efficiency, and content.
Indie Producers Get the Message
One group was not invited to the party: independent producers. They worry that cost savings will cut funding for the shows they make. Both bosses tried to answer that concern directly.
“There’ll be more content because the sum of the two,” McCall said, aiming to calm fears among indie producers about cuts to funding. Frot-Coutaz added that the goal ultimately is to maintain the scale of the content offering.
Public Service Broadcasting Is Protected
ITV has public service broadcasting commitments, including nations, regional and national news, protected until 2034. McCall defended those arrangements by pointing to ITN, the news company that makes ITV’s news under a shared-ownership scheme with four stakeholders, one of whom is ITV.
McCall called ITN a “strong news organization” and asked why anyone would duplicate it. Frot-Coutaz went further, saying Sky has made a very public commitment to maintain Sky News and to maintain ITN news. She declined to say whether that commitment extends past 2034.
The Deal Terms Cover Studios Too
The deal includes a content supply agreement with ITV Studios. That agreement is part of the package.
Technology Investment Is Part of the Case
“The competition is ferocious,” McCall said. “It’s not just [being] bigger; it’s also the investment. So you have to invest in technology. You’ve got to continue to invest in AI. You’ve got to continue to invest in efficiency, and most importantly, you’ve got to have to enough money to constantly invest in content, because content is where it’s at. That’s what makes you all your money.”
Frot-Coutaz echoed that. “Content is super important, but you also need the technology that goes with it.” But technology costs money and for money you need scale. Hence the deal.
The Verdict on the Case
The deal is alive and being reviewed. It is not dead, but it is stuck in the regulatory process, and both bosses want it to pass. They are making the case that this merger is not a threat to the industry — it is the only way to keep up.
Whether that is true depends on who you ask. The regulators will have to decide. For now, the message is clear: the competition is too strong to survive without bigger deals, and both companies are limited in what they can say while the review continues.
Source material: “ITV Boss, Sky’s Content Chief Set Out Vision for Acquisition, Try to Calm Nerves: ‘The Competition is Ferocious’,” Variety.
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