Chipper original dramas boosts Sky

Drama hits such as its own Lucky Man starring James Nesbitt and HBO’s Game of Thrones, which starts its sixth season on Monday, helped Sky’s operating profits up by 12% to £1.14 billion in the past nine months.

Chief executive Jeremy Darroch said that broadening its appeal with more dramas, more movie deals and new technologies had helped Sky to get into more homes in the UK, Germany and Italy. As a result, bidding for sports rights — such as the Bundesliga which will be auctioned in June — is not as crucial to the satellite broadcaster as it once was.

“Our spend on content is getting bigger but it is also getting broader,” he said. “That means we have more optionality on sports rights that we may want to acquire or pass on.”

Sky added 177,000 customers in the third quarter of whom 70,000 were in the UK which remains by far its most profitable country