Sky Plans ITV Airtime for Originals After $2.1B Deal
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- Sky is exploring plans to air Season 1 of Day of the Jackal on ITV before Season 2 premieres on Sky, and to amplify SNL UK by airing reruns on the free-to-air network
- Sky CEO Dana Strong revealed the company will window sport on ITV, meaning some Premier League fixtures could broadcast on the network, and insiders floated premiering first episodes of new Sky series on ITV
- Sky had zero titles break into the official weekly top-50 lists of biggest British TV shows in H1 2026, compared with six UK originals from Netflix and two from Amazon Prime Video in the same window
- The Day of the Jackal, the Eddie Redmayne assassin drama, became Sky's highest-rated original drama ever with 3M viewers in 2024, and SNL UK consistently outperformed its slot average in 2026
- Sky Studios CEO Cécile Frot-Coutaz will command a budget comfortably north of £1 billion a year once the deal closes, making her second only to BBC head of content Kate Phillips as the most powerful content chief in the UK
- Sky has a separate £2.1 billion output deal with ITV Studios for key ITV series including Love Island and Coronation Street, running until 2032, which one third-party production chief flagged as raising 'concentrations of power' concerns
Why it matters: Sky has had zero originals break the UK top 50 in H1 2026 versus Netflix's six — the ITV content-sharing plan directly addresses that ratings weakness, while Frot-Coutaz inherits a £1B+ budget second only to BBC's Kate Phillips in UK commissioning clout.
