Sky's revenue drops 13.8% as it loses 255,000 subscribers

Comcast's European pay-TV business Sky decreased its subscriber base by 255,000 for Q2 to 22.7 million, with its ‘total customer relations’ decreasing during the first six months of the year by 361,000.

As a result, Sky’s second quarter revenue dropped 13.8 percent on year to $4.5 billion. Adjusted interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization EBITDA came to US$863 million, an increase of 54.1 percent.

Due to the decline in subscribers and average income per customer in Italy and Germany, direct-to-consumer (DTC) revenue for Sky fell 2.4 percent to $3.7 billion. The "effect of resets" on its sports rights was noted by Sky.

Sky's content revenue fell by 16.4 percent on year to $265 million, mostly as a result of changes to licensing arrangements for sports programming in Italy and Germany. Additionally, advertising revenue decreased 3.1 percent to $556 million.

The Serie A of Italian top-flight soccer will have DAZN as its primary domestic broadcast partner starting in the 2021–2022 season. In Germany, the streaming service has cut into Sky's portion of the Bundesliga rights market.

Sky's revenue for the first half of 2022 decreased 9.2 percent year over year to US$9.3 billion.

Meanwhile, US-based conglomerate Comcast enjoyed a 5.1 percent on-year revenue boost to US$30 billion for the second quarter of 2022.

Its revenue for the six months ended 30th June 2022 has now jumped 9.5 percent on year to US$61 billion.
Net income for the company, which also owns US media giant NBCUniversal on top of Sky, decreased 9.2 percent on-year to US$3.4 billion. Adjusted earnings before EBITDA) increased 10.1 per ent to US$9.8 billion.