Sky Ireland’s revenues increase slightly to €595m

Increase comes despite company's decision to pause Covid-hit pubs’ subscriptions

Revenues at Sky Ireland’s operations totalled £510 million (€595 million) last year, new figures show.

According to a Sky Ireland spokesman, revenues at the Irish business increased marginally year on year. Its income comprises pay TV, broadband and telephony revenues.

The Sky Ireland business achieved the increase in revenues in spite of its move to pause Sky Sports subscriptions to business customers, such as pubs, across the country while they remained shut last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The spokesman was commenting on new accounts filed by a UK-based entity, Sky Subscribers Services Ltd, which breaks out revenues recorded by Sky's Irish subscription business.

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These figures show that revenues at Sky’s Irish operation declined by 24 per cent from £673 million (€786 million) to £510 million (€595 million) in 2020.

However, the Sky Ireland spokesman noted that the figures were skewed as the £673 million revenues total related to an 18-month period.

Negatively impacted

“The apparent decline is just a function of the change in reporting period,” he said.

The directors’ report states that “direct-to-consumer” revenues were negatively impacted and future periods may also be impacted as a result of lower sports subscription revenues due to the extent of reopening of its commercial customers.

Sky Ireland has close to 700,000 subscribers here.

On the move to pause subscriptions last year, the Sky Ireland spokesman said: “Supporting our Sky business customers during an extremely challenging period has been very important to us. We therefore made the decision to pause subscription charges . . . while they have remained closed.”

He added that Sky employs just under 1,000 people in Ireland, across a range of functions including sales, marketing, finance, retail, support and customer service.

Gordon Deegan

Gordon Deegan

Gordon Deegan is a contributor to The Irish Times