ITV sells its TV channels and ITVX streaming service to Sky for up to £1.6 billion

On 7 July 2026, ITV agreed to sell its media and entertainment division to Sky, a subsidiary of the American conglomerate Comcast, for up to £1.6 billion. The deal redraws the map of British television: Sky gets the ITV channels and the ITVX streaming service, while ITV becomes a purely production-focused business.

What the deal covers

The entire ITV broadcasting division is for sale. Sky is acquiring the channels under the ITV brand, the oldest commercial broadcaster in the UK, founded in 1955, as well as the ITVX streaming platform, launched in December 2022 to replace the former ITV Hub service. ITVX was positioned as a main rival to Netflix and Disney+ in free streaming: basic access without a subscription, premium content for a fee.

• Buyer: Sky, 100% owned by Comcast (US)
• Price: up to £1.6 billion, with a likely earnout component
• Assets: the ITV channels and the ITVX streaming service
• ITV after the deal: a production studio with no broadcast channels or platform of its own

Why ITV chose to split the business

British broadcast television is going through a systemic, structural crisis. Audiences keep migrating to streaming, scheduled linear viewing is shrinking, and advertising budgets follow viewers' attention, so TV advertising is losing share to digital platforms and targeted formats.

Against the backdrop of these tectonic shifts, maintaining broadcast infrastructure has grown more expensive, and competing with Netflix or Amazon Prime Video in streaming on a limited budget has grown harder. Splitting into separate broadcasting and production businesses is the industry's classic response to such a situation.

ITV Studios, the group's production arm, created global formats such as Love Island, Loose Women and Coronation Street. Rights to them are sold to dozens of broadcasters worldwide and generate licensing income that does not depend on the state of the British advertising market. By keeping the studio, ITV gets predictable, diversified revenue, and hands costly distribution to a company with the scale to fund it.

What Sky gets from the acquisition

Sky already holds a dominant position in British pay TV: more than ten million subscribers, its own news channel Sky News, and a strong sports lineup. Adding the ITV channels and ITVX significantly strengthens its position in entertainment content.

For Comcast, Sky's American parent, which also owns NBCUniversal, the deal reinforces its European footprint and adds rights to popular British formats to its global content portfolio.

What changes for viewers

In the short term, little will change for audiences: the ITV channels and the ITVX platform will keep operating as usual. The open question is what Sky will do with ITVX in the medium term: integrate it into its own ecosystem, merge it with Now TV, or keep it as a standalone product.

At the market level, the deal means further consolidation of British television. Once it closes, Sky, together with the BBC and Channel 4, will form the core of domestic broadcasting, but under the control of an American conglomerate.

What this means

The sale of ITV's broadcasting arm to Sky is further confirmation that the era of traditional broadcast television as a self-sufficient business is ending. Where a broadcaster was once a single entity from the film set to the antenna, production and distribution are now moving into separate companies, following the logic of specialization and capital consolidation.