The government wants a closer look at Sky buying ITV. On Wednesday 15 October the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, told Parliament she is “minded to intervene” in the deal. That’s the official way of saying she’s thinking about sending it off for a full investigation, and it’s usually what happens next. If you advertise on ITV, nothing changes for you right now, but the whole thing just got slower and a bit less certain than it looked a week ago, so here’s what has happened and what we make of it.
What the Culture Secretary has said
Sky agreed in July to buy ITV’s television business, which is the channels, ITVX and the airtime sales, for up to £1.6 billion. We covered what was announced and what it might mean in Sky is buying ITV: what could it mean for advertisers? Since then it’s been sitting with the regulators, and this week the government decided it wanted a say too.
The Culture Secretary is allowed to step into a media takeover if she thinks it’s bad for the public, and she has written to both companies saying she thinks this one might be. According to C21 Media, her main worry is the news. Sky News and ITV News between them have about a quarter of all TV news viewing, which doesn’t sound too alarming on its own, but her letter points out that once they’re under one owner, roughly 86 per cent of TV news viewing would be in the hands of just two organisations, the BBC and Sky. She also singles out the North of England, where so many local papers have closed that the television news is now the main source of local news for a lot of people.
There’s a second point that’s easy to miss. The law she’d be using was written for ordinary broadcast television and doesn’t mention streaming at all, so as it stands it has nothing to say about ITVX. She’s said that if she does intervene, she’ll change the law so streaming counts too, which gives you an idea of how seriously she’s taking it.
What happens next
Sky and ITV have until 9am on Monday 20 October to respond. After that she decides whether to intervene properly. If she does, Ofcom looks at the news side of it, the Competition and Markets Authority looks at what it does to competition, and she can then send the whole deal off for an in-depth inquiry, which usually takes six months or more.
Both companies have been very polite about it. Sky says it will “engage constructively” and reminds everyone it has already promised to keep ITV free to air, keep its public service duties and keep ITV News and Sky News editorially separate. ITV says the letter was expected and that it will cooperate fully. Neither of them sounds remotely surprised, because nobody thought a deal this size was going to sail through.
The bit nobody in Westminster is talking about
Everything the Culture Secretary has said is about news and who owns it, and fair enough, that’s her job. It isn’t the question our clients ask us, though. What they want to know is what happens to the price of airtime, and the choice, when one company is selling the advertising on ITV and on Sky.
That one is for the Competition and Markets Authority rather than the Culture Secretary, and it’s the part we’re watching most closely. Sky already sells advertising for its own channels and for Channel 5, and adding ITV would give one sales house something like 70 per cent of traditional TV advertising, a figure quoted by competition lawyers in VideoWeek’s round-up of expert views. Most of those lawyers expect the deal to go through in the end with conditions attached, and those conditions are where the things that matter to advertisers will actually be decided. ISBA, which represents the big advertisers, has said brands’ interests “must be fully considered throughout the process”, and we would expect them to push hard on that.
What it means if you advertise on ITV
Nothing changes for now. ITV and Sky are still separate companies, ITV airtime is bought and sold exactly as it was last month, and the deal was never expected to complete before the second half of 2027 anyway. If anything this pushes it later, so if you’re planning a campaign for the next year or so, plan it as normal and don’t let any of this hold you up.
We’ll update this article when Sky and ITV have responded and when the Culture Secretary has made her mind up. If you’d like to talk through what it might mean for your own plans, get in touch and we will give you an honest view.
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