Comcast is spinning off its media operation, including Sky and NBCUniversal, into a separate publicly listed company, a move that will take a year to complete and leaves another chunk of media power to be rearranged for investors. The US group, which acquired Sky's European operations for £31bn eight years ago, said the split will separate the company that runs broadband and mobile services to 65m US homes from the film, TV, streaming and theme park business built around NBCUniversal.
The Corporate Shuffle
Brian Roberts, the co-chief executive of Comcast, said separating the two companies would "unlock a more entrepreneurial management approach" for each business. That’s the language of boardrooms, where workers, viewers and subscribers are treated as variables in a spreadsheet and the real goal is to make the asset look cleaner for capital. After the deal is completed, investors will hold shares in Comcast, which will remain listed and continue running broadband and mobile services to 65m US homes, as well as NBCUniversal for now.
The NBCUniversal business, which includes Peacock and the NBC network, will be run by Mike Cavanagh, who is now co-chief executive of Comcast. Roberts said Cavanagh’s vision is for a "unique, independent, focused company" with brands and assets across theme parks, film, television, streaming, sports and news. He added that the new company will be "well positioned to pursue the significant opportunities that lie ahead, to partner across the media and entertainment ecosystem, and will be poised to grow." The phrasing is polished. The purpose is blunt. Media assets are being sorted, packaged and positioned for the next round of competition.
Comcast’s record here is familiar. This year, it completed the spin-off of US cable networks including MSNBC, E! and SYFY into a new publicly traded company, Versant, as traditional TV audiences continue to dwindle. The company has already shown it will cut and split across its businesses when the numbers demand it. People get restructuring. Investors get options.
Sky, ITV and the News Machine
When Comcast acquired Sky for £31bn in 2018, it guaranteed to keep funding Sky News for a decade, increasing that funding annually in line with inflation. That commitment is now drawing closer to expiring, and concerns have been raised about whether the US company will continue to fully fund Sky News. The channel has an annual budget of about £100m but is thought to make losses of as much as £80m.
David Rhodes, the executive chair of Sky News, has previously said the Comcast commitment provides Sky News with more security than most other organisations, and that the parent company has been "supportive of our independence every step of the way". Yet the spin-off renews speculation about the long-term plans for Sky News. Independence, in this setup, still depends on the mood of the owner and the arithmetic of losses.
Sky is also weeks away from officially announcing its £1.6bn takeover of ITV's media and entertainment operations, which include its free-to-air channels in the UK and ITVX streaming platform. If that deal clears regulatory hurdles, the NBCUniversal spin-off company will control 40% of ITN, which produces news for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, making it the largest shareholder in the news provider. The media market keeps consolidating, and the public gets fewer owners with more leverage over what passes for news.
Comcast also opted not to renew a licensing agreement held by News Corporation to use the Sky News brand in Australia. Sky News Australia is rebranding as News24 later this year. Last month, Sky exited its controversial news joint venture with the United Arab Emirates, Sky News Arabia, which has been criticised for its coverage of the war in Sudan, with accusations of genocide denial. The corporate exits come and go. The damage done by the content stays behind.
Last year, Dana Strong, the chief executive of Sky, told staff the broadcaster would continue to back Sky News regardless of any ongoing support by Comcast, which has cut jobs at NBC News in the US. That’s the promise employees hear while the company trims elsewhere. Support, apparently, is conditional.
The Market Decides, Everyone Else Waits
In 2020, a plan to launch a global rolling news channel to challenge CNN by bringing together Sky News and Comcast's US-based NBC, called NBC Sky World News, was scrapped. The grand global project never made it off the drawing board. Now the same empire is being split again, with the pieces reassigned according to what investors and regulators will tolerate.
Since buying Sky, Comcast has written down the value of the company by almost a quarter, and last year agreed to sell Sky Deutschland to RTL. NBCUniversal is also building its first theme park in Europe near Bedford, Universal United Kingdom Resort, due to open in 2031 and expected to attract about 8.5 million visitors in its first year of operation. The company’s future is being mapped through deals, write-downs and visitor forecasts, not through any democratic say from the people who live with the consequences.
Mike Proulx, a director at the research firm Forrester, said the creation of a separately listed NBCUniversal could attract the interest of Netflix. He pointed to Netflix’s $82.7bn (£62.5bn) deal to buy the studios and streaming business of Warner Bros Discovery, only to be overtaken by a $108.4bn counteroffer for the whole business made by Paramount Skydance. Proulx said: "Peacock is a scaled streaming asset paired with a major studio and global content engine. If that combination looks familiar, it is because it mirrors what Netflix wanted with WBD – a streaming service plus studio. Do not rule out another attempt, despite Netflix's public comments dialling back mergers and acquisitions."
That’s the media economy in one neat sentence: assets, counteroffers, and another round of consolidation waiting in the wings. The names change. The logic doesn’t.