VS Series
Sky v ITV
The pay-TV giant that wants to buy ITV's channels, and the broadcaster it wants. How do their accounts compare?
Sky leads on turnover, pre-tax profit, growth and net assets; ITV on profit margin. Sky is the biggest by turnover at £10,541m, against £3,511m at ITV. ITV keeps more of every £100 it takes, £9.63 as pre-tax profit.
The year ends are close enough to compare like for like. ITV files group accounts that include subsidiaries; Sky files for a single company, which flatters the group on size.
Since these accounts: On 4 November 2026 the culture secretary issued a public interest intervention notice on Sky's planned £1.6bn purchase of ITV's media and entertainment business, asking the regulators to report on it; the deal could be blocked or changed. The figures here are from the latest filed accounts.
Accounts compared: Sky to Dec 2025 · ITV to Dec 2025
Who they are
Sky
Sky UK Limited · 02906991Sky provides pay television, broadband, mobile and home phone services to households in the UK and Ireland.In brief: pay TV and broadband · subscriptions and advertising · Sky Sports and Sky News · owned by ComcastFull profile →ITV
ITV PLC · 04967001ITV is the UK's largest commercial broadcaster, running the ITV channels and the ITVX streaming service.In brief: commercial broadcaster · ITV channels and ITVX · advertising · ITV Studios productionFull profile →The Numbers
The leader on each measure is marked. Movements are against each company's own prior year. Pre-tax profit is filed except where marked (est.). Sky UK's pre-tax profit of £931m includes £1,254m of dividends from its own subsidiaries; its operating profit, from trading, was £7m on £10,541m of revenue (Sky UK accounts, pp. 18 and 32).
Category winners
How they differ
How do Sky and ITV make their money differently?
Sky sells subscriptions: 84p of every £1 of its revenue comes from customers paying for TV, broadband, mobile and Sky Glass. ITV sells audiences and programmes: advertising is 42% of its revenue and ITV Studios, which makes shows for ITV and for other broadcasters and streamers, is 52%. Sky's trading business barely broke even in 2025, with an operating profit of £7m; most of its £931m pre-tax profit was dividends from its own subsidiaries.
This panel reads: Sky, Sky UK Limited, accounts to December 2025; ITV, ITV plc, accounts to December 2025. The numbers above use each company's latest figures on Spark Intel, which can be a different year.
How they make it
84%of revenue from customers' subscriptions and purchases
Customers pay monthly for TV, broadband, mobile and Sky Glass. Advertising is a tenth of revenue; selling its channels to other platforms is about 5%.
“Direct to consumer revenue includes subscription and transactional revenue from residential and commercial customers.”
£1,723mof advertising revenue, down 5%
Advertising on its channels and ITVX, and ITV Studios making and selling programmes. Before internal sales, Studios is 52% of revenue and advertising 42%.
“Total M&E revenue was down 5% in the year, with TAR down 5%, which was better than guidance.”
How they sell it
£500mbilled in advance at the year end
Most TV customers pay before they watch. Hardware such as Sky Glass televisions is sold bundled with a subscription.
“billing and collecting in advance for digital television subscriptions for the majority of its residential customer base”
16.5mmonthly ITVX users, up 12%
Free to watch, paid for by advertisers. ITV has put its ad-funded streaming ahead of paid subscriptions, which slipped to 0.9 million.
“we have prioritised our ad-funded proposition over our paid proposition”
How they grow
£8.4bnof TV rights signed for future years
By buying sport and programmes: programming, its biggest cost, rose 3.7% to £3,557m.
“Programming costs are higher due to new contracts for English Football League and Premier League”
+10%Studios revenue from outside ITV
By selling shows to streamers around the world: ITV Studios' sales outside ITV rose 10%.
“external revenue up 10%, reflecting strong demand from global streaming platforms”
Where the profit comes from
£7moperating profit
Running costs took almost all of its £10,541m of revenue. Most of its £931m pre-tax profit was dividends from its own subsidiaries.
£1,210mspent on content, its biggest cost
Profit before one-off costs of £448m; £338m after them. The year before included £212m from selling BritBox International.
“content costs were down 5% to £1.210 billion”
Not disclosed
Customer numbers, revenue split between TV, broadband and mobile, and the cost of sports rights on their own.
Revenue from individual formats such as Love Island, and what ITVX costs to run.
Pages quoted: Sky pp. 3, 18, 28, 32, 49, 58, 63; ITV pp. 14, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26, 34, 136.
Sky's figures are Sky UK Limited's own accounts, not the wider Sky group owned by Comcast; ITV's are the ITV plc group. ITV's revenue shares are of £4,121m before sales between its two divisions; the scorecard above uses its external revenue of £3,511m. Percentages are our arithmetic from the pages cited.
Sources: Sky UK Limited, Annual Report and Financial Statements 2025; ITV plc, Annual Report and Accounts 2025. Page numbers are the documents' own.
The Takeaway
- ITV converts the most of its turnover. Of every £100, £9.63 reaches pre-tax profit, against £8.83 at Sky.
- Sky is the largest on the top line, £10,541m of turnover, 3.0x ITV's £3,511m.
- Sky is growing fastest, turnover +1.4% on its own prior year.
- Sky is the biggest employer with 9,901 people; ITV pays the most per head, an average staff cost of about £101,000.
- Sky has the largest balance sheet, net assets of £6,750m, while ITV holds the most cash at £302m.
Who keeps the most of every £100 of sales?
ITV keeps the most: £9.63 of every £100 of turnover becomes pre-tax profit. Sky keeps the least, £8.83.
Every profit figure here is the one the company filed.
The chart splits each company's turnover into £100: what goes on people, on interest and on everything else, and what is left as profit.
Out of every £100 of turnover
Each column is £100 of that company's own turnover, so companies of any size compare on one scale; the figures are pounds out of each £100, not millions. Companies run from the best margin to the worst. Payroll is staff costs, financing is interest paid, other running costs are everything else, and profit is pre-tax profit, filed or estimated as marked in the table. A loss is not an extra cost: it is the part of the costs that runs past the £100 line, marked with a red bracket. Hover over any segment for its figure.
Who is the biggest, and does the comparison hold?
By turnover the order is Sky (£10,541m), ITV (£3,511m).
By headcount, Sky leads with 9,901 employees.
The accounting periods all end in the same month. The bases differ: group accounts include the businesses a company owns, single-company accounts do not.
Turnover on the latest filing
Who is growing fastest?
Sky grew fastest, turnover +1.4% on its own prior year, ahead of ITV (+0.7%).
Turnover change on each company's own prior year
Who employs the most, who pays the most, and who brings in the most per head?
Sky employs the most, 9,901 people, against 6,759 at ITV.
ITV has the highest average staff cost, about £101,000 a head; Sky the lowest, about £92,000.
Sky brings in the most turnover per employee, about £1.1m, against £519,000 at ITV. It says as much about the business model as the workforce: a marketplace or a wholesaler needs far fewer people per pound than a restaurant or a gym.
Who owns each one?
Ownership as recorded on the Companies House register of people with significant control, in the bands the register uses.
What does the full ledger show?
| Measure | Sky | ITV |
|---|---|---|
| Registered name | SKY UK LIMITED | ITV PLC |
| Company number | 02906991 | 04967001 |
| Incorporated | 1994 | 2003 |
| Accounts filed | 2 October 2026 | 21 May 2026 |
| Turnover, prior year | £10,396m | £3,488m |
| Pre-tax profit, prior year | £253m | £521m |
| Staff costs | £907m | £684m |
| Payroll share of turnover | 8.6% | 19.5% |
| Employees, prior year | 10,179 | 6,965 |
| Dividends paid | n/d | £187m |
| Charges outstanding | 4 | 1 |
A figure the filing does not disclose is shown as n/d; a zero in a filing is treated as not disclosed. Rounding: below £0.1m in thousands, £0.1m to £2m to one decimal place, above that to the nearest million.
Sky v ITV: common questions
How do Sky and ITV make their money differently?
Sky and ITV earn their money in opposite ways. Sky UK is a subscription business: in 2025, £8,897m of its £10,541m revenue came from customers paying for TV, broadband, mobile and Sky Glass, with £1,123m from advertising and £521m from supplying channels to other platforms. ITV is funded by advertisers and by making programmes: of £4,121m of revenue before internal sales, £1,723m was advertising and £2,130m came from ITV Studios, which sells shows to ITV and to global streamers. Sky's biggest cost is programming, £3,557m, with £8.4bn of TV rights already signed for future years; ITV spent £1,210m on content for its channels and ITVX. Sky UK's trading business made an operating profit of only £7m; its £931m pre-tax profit came mainly from £1,254m of dividends from its own subsidiaries. ITV made £338m before tax. ITV's annual report says it was in discussions with Sky over a possible sale of its Media & Entertainment business.
Who is the biggest of Sky or ITV?
Sky, with turnover of £10,541m in the year to December 2025.
Which makes the most profit?
Sky: £931m pre-tax in the year to December 2025.
Which employs the most people?
Sky, with 9,901 employees in its latest accounts.
Sky or ITV: which is bigger?
Sky, with turnover of £10,541m against £3,511m at ITV on their latest filings. On margin, ITV keeps more of each £100 as pre-tax profit. The full head to head is in the VS Series. Read the VS page →
Where do these figures come from?
Each company's latest accounts filed at Companies House. Each links to its full Spark Intel profile, which names the filing it comes from.
Deep dive: what story does ITV's money tell? →
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