ITV has agreed to sell its media and entertainment division to Sky, the Comcast-owned broadcaster, in a deal worth up to £1.6bn that redraws the map of British television.
The transaction hands Sky the ITV channels and the ITVX streaming service, and leaves the seller as a pure production business, a split that arrives as traditional broadcasters everywhere try to find scale against the streamers.
It also lands months after the UK moved to bring Netflix, Amazon, and Disney+ under broadcaster-style rules, a sign of how blurred the line between the two camps has become.
The structure of the deal is more layered than the headline number suggests. ITV will receive £1.2bn in cash, plus an earn-out of up to £200m tied to its advertising performance in the 2027 financial year, and it will keep Love Productions, the studio behind The Great British Bake Off, folding it into the ITV Studios business that remains. The rest of the up-to-£1.6bn figure reflects that contingent and asset mix rather than a flat price.
What ITV becomes on the other side of this is the more interesting question. Stripped of its channels, it is a standalone production company, making programmes for the combined ITV-Sky operation as well as for other broadcasters and streamers around the world.
