RTL Group’s acquisition of Sky’s German business represents a major shake-up of the German media market. Sky’s owner Comcast has been looking to sell the loss making business for some years now, but this RTL deal seems to have caught some by surprise. The German market has proved tough for Sky and despite their recent success with some sports rights (the majority of Bundesliga football matches until 2028/9) and the expectation that they would finally break even this year there didn’t really seem to be a clear path out of trouble. There will be lots to consider as RTL try to combine the businesses and adapt to the demands of running a full Pay TV business in Germany (if that is what they do) and work out what the optimum route to serving content to German viewers is.
Both businesses have represented a key route to the German market for the US Studios. With Sky being the largest single outlet for the Studios in terms of new season first window premieres, with 23% of all premieres in 2024 - up from 9% in 2023. The 2023 drop was a result of Studios holding on to their own content as they supported their D2C initiatives, with the share of premieres from US Studio owned services peaking at 70% in 2023. This fell significantly (to 47%) in 2024 as Studios set a path for streaming profitability and went back to selling more content to third parties in global markets.
Typically RTL’s main commercial rival in the market ProSieben is its main competitor for US Studio content sold in the market. Now with the combined RTL/Sky business there will be a lot of focus on their content strategy and how activity with US Studios may be impacted. 33% of US Studio TV Series new season premieres in 2024 were from RTL and Sky and going forward it will be interesting to see how they offer US shows across their combined portfolio of services. With RTL seemingly prioritising a subscription approach to RTL+ in Germany perhaps we will see a clearer windowing approach involving more US content initially behind a pay-wall before going free.
There is a lot changing in the market already, with RTL’s premieres of US Studio content having migrated almost exclusively to the RTL+ premium tier, ProSieben increasingly prioritising Joyn (with more on an AVOD model) and HBO Max launching in early 2026. Sports will be a key area of activity to watch, but as RTL look at synergies there will need to be consideration at its simplest for how best it can offer US content to German viewers now it has control of more moving parts.
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