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Sky to reduce its dependence on sports broadcast rights in favour of more entertainment content

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By Tony Connelly, Sports Marketing Reporter

November 18, 2016 | 3 min read

Sky will become more selective about what sports broadcast rights it buys as it looks to shift its focus onto entertainment content amid shifting viewing habits.

Sky Sports

Sky is seeing a decrease in appetite for live sport among viewers

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley investor conference in Barcelona recently, chief executive Jeremy Darroch, said Sky will reduce its dependence on sports with a new strategy that will prioritise the most important rights and let others go.

“Sport is very important, obviously football is very important, but relatively, every day it is less important than it was and that allows us to make more choices about how much we spend, where we invest and where we choose not to,” said Darroch.

The announcement comes amid declining audience figures for Sky’s Premier League broadcasts and is part of a wider issue for sports broadcasters, including BT Sport, who are seeing a slump in viewership following on from an almost 80% increase in the rights costs.

Darroch pointed to competition from other major sporting events such as Olympics and Euro 2016 as a factor in the decline, however he maintained that wider issues were to blame.

Darroch added: “It’s a slightly more complex picture. We’re seeing similar things going on with the NFL. A lot of sports governing bodies will keep an eye on this as well.”

One key factor which Sky has been affected by is millennials wavering commitment to watch entire games and instead consume entertainment on mobile devices.

Other factors which have recently been identified as harming sports broadcasters figures is the ocean of on-demand entertainment available to millennials from the likes of Netflix, which is contributing to a changing appetite for sport in favour of films and TV shows.

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