Sky Boosted By Sky+ Uptake

Buoyed by the success of its Sky+ product offering, satellite broadcaster Sky
reported a 10% revenue rise to £3.38bn in the nine months to the end of March in
its third quarter financial results.

With fresh competition from the newly formed Virgin Media attempting to
challenge Sky’s monopoly, the latter’s customer base is in a strong position to
defend against the opposition having risen to 8.49m households.

There were signs of a slowdown however with the 51,000 net additions made in
the last three months the worst quarterly rise for Sky since the broadcaster
turned digital in 2001 save for the same quarter last year when only 40,000 were
added.

Over a quarter of the total customers are now signed up to Sky+ with 2.17m
households using the personal video recorder service after a growth of 199,000
in the first three months of the year – the first time this total has passed the
2m mark.

The company added 60,000 high-definition subscribers, taking its tally to
244,000 at the end of March, 10 months after the service launched.

Sky Broadband customer numbers more than doubled to 457,000 at the end of the
March, up from 197,000 at the end of December.

Virgin Media and Sky are currently in the High Court over an argument of
carriage of channels on the opposing service – a debate that includes the
provision of Sky Sports News.