ITV’s sale to Sky is progressing as planned, CEO says

ITV CEO Carolyn McCall said on 11 November that the agreed sale of its Media & Entertainment business to Sky was progressing as planned. ITV continues to expect completion in the second half of 2027, with regulatory reviews still under way.

Comcast-owned Sky agreed in July 2026 to pay £1.6 billion (about $2.1 billion) for the business, including ITV’s television channels and ITVX streaming service. The sale would leave ITV as a standalone content company built around its production arm, ITV Studios.

Advertising slowdown prompts spending cuts

The business being sold faces weaker advertising demand. In a trading update covered by Variety, ITV said third-quarter advertising revenue fell 8% from a year earlier, leaving revenue for the first nine months of 2026 down 1%.

ITV expects advertising revenue to fall around 5%–10% in the fourth quarter and around 2%–3% for the full year, compared with the corresponding periods in 2025. It attributed the slowdown to economic uncertainty, advertising money moving to global streaming services and UK restrictions on advertising less healthy food.

To match costs to demand, ITV announced £30 million (about $40.3 million) in additional temporary fourth-quarter savings in Media & Entertainment. That includes £25 million in programming savings and £5 million in discretionary spending outside programming.

What regulators will examine

Nandy’s public-interest intervention notice, issued on 4 November 2026, requires the Competition and Markets Authority to examine jurisdiction and competition, while media regulator Ofcom examines the media public-interest issues. McCall called the notice an expected and important milestone and said she was pleased with the review’s pace.

The considerations behind Nandy’s intervention include free expression of opinion in news media, a sufficient range of news views and a sufficient range of people controlling media businesses serving different audiences. She also plans legislation to extend an existing public-interest consideration about a wide range of high-quality broadcasting for varied tastes to on-demand programs.

The competition authority invited initial comments from 23 July through 6 August 2026. It described the invitation as the first part of its information gathering and said it had not yet launched a formal investigation. On 15 October, Nandy told Sky and ITV she was minded to intervene; she considered their representations before issuing the notice. The authority and Ofcom must report to her by 27 January 2027.