Sky Group

Sky Group Limited

Logo used since 2020
Sky Campus in Isleworth, England
Formerly	British Sky Broadcasting plc (1990–2014) Sky plc (2014–2019)
Company type	Subsidiary
Traded as	LSE: SKY (1994–2018) NYSE: BSY (1994–2010)
Industry	Telecommunications Mass media
Predecessor	Sky Television British Satellite Broadcasting
Founded	2 November 1990; 34 years ago (2 November 1990)
Headquarters	Sky Campus London, England, UK
Area served	Europe
Key people	Dana Strong (CEO)
Products	Direct-broadcast satellite, pay television, broadcasting, broadband and telephony services
Revenue	£14.5 billion (2022)
Owner	News Corporation (39.14%, until 2013) 21st Century Fox (39.14%, 2013–2018)
Number of employees	32,000 (2021)
Parent	Comcast (2018–present)
Divisions	The Cloud Diagonal View
Subsidiaries	Sky UK Sky Deutschland Sky Italia Sky Studios Now (operated by Xfinity in the United States)
Website	skygroup.sky
Footnotes / references [1][2][3]

Sky Group Limited^[4] is a British media and telecommunications conglomerate owned by Comcast and headquartered in London. It has operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Sky is Europe's largest media company and pay-TV broadcaster by revenue (as of 2018^[update]),^[5] with 23 million subscribers and more than 31,000 employees as of 2019.^[2][6] The company is primarily involved in satellite television, producing and broadcasting. The current CEO is Dana Strong.

Initially formed in 1990 by the equal merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting, BSkyB became the UK's largest digital pay television company.^[7] In 2014, after completing the acquisition of Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, the merged company changed its name to Sky plc.^[8]

Since its founding, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation held 39.14% of Sky Group, and in June 2010, they attempted to buy out the rest of Sky, but the bid was withdrawn in July 2011 following the News International phone hacking scandal that also led to News Corporation splitting into News Corp and 21st Century Fox, the latter of which continued to hold News' stake in Sky.^[9] In December 2016, 21st Century Fox made a bid to acquire the remaining shares of Sky, pending government approval. After The Walt Disney Company announced that they were to acquire Fox, Comcast initially engaged in a bidding war, but dropped out to acquire Sky instead, outbidding Fox with an offer for £17.28 per share; Fox sold their stake in October 2018, followed by the remaining shareholders a month later. NBCUniversal, Sky's sister company, has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast since 2013.

Before the acquisition by Comcast, Sky was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and had a market capitalisation of approximately £18.75 billion (€26.76 billion) as of 2018.^[10]