Sky's multi-million pound mistake puts media giant in hot water
British broadcaster Sky faces massive payouts after finding years-long ad revenue calculation errors. The discovery affects major partners and dates back to pre-Comcast ownership days
Skyʼs ad-sales division made a big-time mess-up thatʼs gonna cost them hundreds of millions (the error started bout 7 years ago and nobody caught it till now)
The media company is rushing to fix things by writing huge checks to Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount after finding out Sky Media didnt report proper ad revenue numbers; this whole thing started before Comcast bought them for £30bn
Some workers at Sky Media already lost their jobs cause of this mess-up. Dana Strong the CEO tried keeping it quiet – even though the company did put the money stuff in their books somewhere. Last yearʼs numbers show £1.2bn in ad sales which was part of their £10.2bn total income
The timing isnt great for Sky cause theyʼre already dealing with other stuff:
- Lost £224m in operations last year
- Got streaming services eating into their main TV business
- Fighting with Warner about future deals
- Legal battle over Harry Potter TV shows
When we became aware of an issue in relation to payments to partners‚ we acted decisively
Warner Bros is planning its own thing called “Max“ (coming in bout 2 years) which might shake-up how British people watch shows like Succession. Skyʼs trying to keep their hold on new TV shows – but its getting harder everyday
The whole situation is extra-rough for Brian Roberts at Comcast; who probably paid way too much when he bought Sky. They already had to write-down £6.7bn of Skys value‚ and now theres this new headache to deal with
