CMA: Conduct an investigation into ITV/Sky acquisition

BEP has written to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to ask it to conduct an in-depth investigation of the acquisition of ITV's media and entertainment division by Sky UK Limited. 

The UK has three big sellers of television advertising and this deal would leave two, with Sky News and ITV News sharing an owner. Sky says the deal is needed to take on Netflix and YouTube, but while that may help Sky, it will leave viewers and advertisers with one less choice than they had before. 

Sky expects to save around £200 million a year, mostly by spending less on marketing, on technology and on content bought from abroad, with job cuts making up the remainder, while around £950 million of what ITV gets for the sale would go to its shareholders. Neither company has explained what any of this does for television audiences.

Most of the commitments being talked about are things ITV already has to do under its broadcasting licence, and the promise to keep the two newsrooms editorially separate runs out in 2030.

The CMA can only look at competition, and the question of who ends up owning the news sits outside its remit. At the start of August, the Culture Secretary declined to intervene on media plurality grounds in the Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merger, settling instead for undertakings agreed with her department, and we will be pressing her and Ofcom not to take the same course here.

You can read the full letter here.