Sky and ITV bosses defend $2.1bn deal at RTS London

Sky's $2.1 billion plan to buy ITV's Media & Entertainment division is now going through the regulatory process in the U.K. The leaders of both companies used separate keynote speeches in London on Tuesday 29 September 2026 to defend the deal.

ITV chief executive Carolyn McCall and Sky Studios chief executive Cecile Frot-Coutaz spoke at the RTS London Convention 2026 at Kings Place, London, according to the convention programme. McCall's session was chaired by BBC News culture and media editor Katie Razzall. Variety

McCall said the deal "wouldn't have gone through" even six years ago. Her argument was scale. She said streaming content available to audiences had grown from 200,000 hours five years ago to 900,000 hours now, excluding YouTube.

That explosion in choice is why consolidation is on the table. Frot-Coutaz said the transaction "is very much a response to what's happened in the marketplace." The goal, she said, is "to maintain the scale of the content offering."

The proposed target is ITV Media & Entertainment, the division that houses ITV's broadcast and streaming operations. ITV initiated the deal for Sky, which is owned by Comcast, to buy that division, according to Yahoo News UK reporting of McCall's remarks. The deal terms also include a content supply agreement with ITV Studios, meaning a continuing arrangement for programmes made by ITV's production arm. Yahoo

News was a central question in both sessions. ITV is a 71-year-old public service broadcaster, meaning it holds a licence with obligations including news provision. Its public service broadcasting commitments, including nations, regional and national news, are protected until 2034.

ITV's news is made by ITN, which operates under a shared-ownership scheme of four stakeholders, one of which is ITV. Frot-Coutaz said Sky had made a public commitment to maintain Sky News and to maintain ITN news.

She declined to say whether that commitment would extend past 2034, when ITV's public service broadcast licence expires. That date matters. It is the point when the current licence protections fall away.

For viewers, this means no immediate change to what appears on screen. The deal still needs regulatory clearance. What the two keynotes offered was the industry case: two large U.K. businesses saying they need greater size to keep commissioning and scheduling at the current level.