Channel 4 and Sky expand long-term partnership

2 July 2021

Channel 4 and Sky today announced they have renewed and expanded their long-term commercial partnership. The new multi-year agreement will extend the successful strategic relationship, giving both parties more opportunities to collaborate, support commercial growth, and innovate as broadcasting evolves in the future.

The deal builds on the existing partnership by extending the current agreement for several years, ensuring that Sky customers continue to have easy access to Channel 4 brands and content across Sky’s products, with deep integration into Sky’s world-leading product innovation as well as high levels of content discoverability.

The partnership will make even more Channel 4 content available to Sky customers and will see further and deeper integration of All 4 into all of Sky’s existing and future TV products. The deal also gives Channel 4 the opportunity to unlock new digital advertising revenues to support the delivery of its Future4 strategy. Using the innovative advertising technologies developed by Freewheel, Channel 4’s advertising inventory across linear and on demand will become addressable allowing the broadcaster to further improve its content monetisation across Sky’s platforms.

Sky customers will be offered a broader range of Channel 4 content including more than 1000 hours of All 4 Exclusives.  This is in addition to comprehensive catch up and a wide range of must-see Channel 4 box sets, including a variety of upfront box set stacks (where entire series are made available ahead of linear broadcast).

Alex Mahon, Chief Executive at Channel 4 said:  “When we set out our Future4 strategy last year, we made clear that securing strategic distribution partnerships would be a vital part of ensuring we can maximise our reach and impact with viewers in a digital age, grow our revenues and compete more effectively for the future. I’m delighted to have agreed this deal which extends a longstanding and incredibly successful partnership between Channel 4 and Sky.” 

Stephen van Rooyen, Executive VP & Chief Executive, UK & Europe at Sky said: “We know how much Sky customers love Channel 4’s content so it’s great that we’ve secured an extension, and expansion, to our existing agreement. This brings Sky customers more of what they want and supports Channel 4 to deliver on their key priorities, all while providing both parties with long-term confidence in the strategic partnership. The expansion of Channel 4’s content, alongside Sky’s existing partnerships, and the impressive slate of Sky Originals planned for this year, makes it even easier for Sky customers to access everything they love, in one place.”

This builds on a successful partnership with Sky Media in which Channel 4 Sales will integrate with Sky AdSmart, to better tailer ads to different pay TV households, and support CFlight, the industry’s first unified advertising metric that captures all live, on-demand and time-shifted commercial impressions.

For Sky, this is the latest step in bringing the best entertainment together in one place, easy. In the latter part of 2020, Sky finalised a new multi-year European partnership with Amazon, launching Prime Video on Sky and NOW devices, and signed long-term partnerships with Entertainment One and STUDIOCANAL, bolstering Sky Cinema’s offerings. Sky customers already have access to content from Netflix, Disney+, Warner Media (HBO), Showtime, Discovery, Fox, Sony, and many other partners in each of Sky’s markets. Adding to this, Sky has brought lifestyle and entertainment apps like Fiit, Roxi and Peloton onto Sky Q, making it easier for customers to access everything they love.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

Sky and Channel 4 last agreed their partnership agreement in September 2019. You can read the announcement here.

For further information:

Victoria Gillespie, Head of Corporate PR, Channel 4, vgillespie@channel4.co.uk, 07976 315056

Jessica Bihari, Senior Corporate Communications Manager, Sky, Jessica.bihari@sky.uk, 07866 896512

About Sky 

Sky is Europe’s leading media and entertainment company and is proud to be part of the Comcast group. Across six countries, we connect our 23.4 million customers to the best entertainment, sports, news, and arts including our own award-winning original content.

Our technology, including the market leading Sky Q, connects people to everything they love – with entertainment from Sky TV, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and BBC iPlayer, and apps like Spotify, YouTube, BBC Sounds, Highbrow, Peloton, Fiit, and more, in one place, easy. Our streaming service NOW brings viewers all the enjoyment of Sky with the flexibility of a contract-free service. Through our new B2B broadband provider, Sky Connect, we offer superfast broadband with business-grade 4G back-up to small businesses in the UK.

Building on the success of Sky Originals like Chernobyl, Gangs of London and Brassic, we are doubling our investment in original content by 2024 through Sky Studios. Sky News provides impartial and trustworthy journalism for free, Sky Arts is the UK’s only dedicated free-to-air arts channel making the arts accessible for everyone and Sky Sports, our leading sports broadcasting service, brings customers some of the biggest and best global sporting events from the Premier League to Formula 1 and everything in-between. Our new TV and movie studio, Sky Studios Elstree, which will open in 2022, is expected to create over 2,000 new jobs and generate an additional £3 billion of production investment in the UK over the first five years.

We believe that we can be a force for good in the communities in which we operate. We’re committed to being Europe’s first net zero carbon entertainment company by 2030 and we’re proud to be a Principal Partner and Media Partner of COP26. We take pride in our approach to diversity and inclusion: we’ve been recognised by The Times and Stonewall for our commitment to diversity and we’ve set ambitious 2025 targets to continue to increase diversity and representation.  We’re also committed to investing £30million across our markets over three years to improve our approach to diversity and inclusion, and to tackle racial injustice.

About Channel 4

Channel 4 is a publicly-owned yet commercially-funded public service broadcaster and has a remit to be innovative, experimental and distinctive. Its public ownership and not-for-profit status ensure all profit generated by its commercial activity is directly reinvested back into the delivery of its public service remit.

As a publisher-broadcaster, Channel 4 is also required to commission UK content from the independent production sector and currently works with over 300 creative companies across the UK every year.

In addition to the main Channel 4 service, its portfolio includes: E4, More4, Film4, 4seven, Channel4.com, streaming service All 4 and The Box Plus Network, including 4Music.