Parent company Comcast still tight-lipped about exactly how many subscribers Sky UK has, but latest results report more households in the UK have switched to Sky.
Instead, Comcast prefers to mention “Total Customer Relationships” covering all of the countries Sky operates in, including non-TV customers. During the summer, Sky’s customer numbers dropped 233,000 to almost 23 million, mostly in Italy, where Sky has lost the rights to show Serie A football.
That figure would have been worse, according to Comcast, had Sky UK not have increased its customer figures. Counting all countries where Sky is present, customer figures have stagnated in the past year.
Comcast declined to break-down figures for the UK, meaning it’s not possible to see how many new customers Sky has gained here, to offset the bad figures in Europe. Increases in the UK are expected to be driven by an increased uptake of streaming service NOW, in line with overall increases across all streaming platforms.
Overall, Sky enjoyed increased revenues over the past 12 months, thanks to a reduction in production and sports rights costs. However, the reduction was largely due to Covid-19 and the postponement of some events and delays in starting new productions.
[Last year, Comcast had readjusted its formula for calculating total customer relations in continental Europe, to match how figures are calculated in the UK and Ireland. Comparative figures have been readjusted to reflect this change and are taken into consideration in this report.]