RTL this morning announced it has completed its acquisition of Sky Deutschland, in a €68 million deal designed to strengthen the European media business in the face of competition from global streaming giants.
The acquisition sees RTL Group take full ownership of Sky’s businesses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, including customer relationships in Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and South Tyrol.
This brings Sky’s 12.3 million paying subscribers in the DACH region into the RTL business, in a transaction expected to generate annual synergies of €250 million within three years of completion, according to RTL.
“The transaction underscores the RTL Group’s strategic focus on domestic mergers in Europe,” the company said in a statement. “The aim is to sustainably strengthen local media companies in competition with global streaming services.”
Discounts on discounts
The deal was first announed in June 2025, and received regulatory approval from the European Commission in April 2026. However, the €68 million price tag marks a reduction on the €150 million previously announced – which was itself considered a large discount, considering Comcast paid $39 billion for Sky back in 2018.
Analysts considered the sale an acknowledgment by Comcast that it overpaid for the pay-TV business. The US telco failed to turn a profit in Germany, a notoriously difficult pay-TV market, and set about trying to offload the German business – even reportedly offering €1 billion to companies to take the asset of its hands.
After executing a series of cost-cutting measures, Sky Deutschland managed to break even last year, at which point RTL agreed to buy the company; an approach that François Godard, an independent media analyst, considers a smart move by the European media group.
“The price tag is very low, they’re not throwing money out the window,” Godard tells VideoWeek. “It’s a very reasonable deal.”
As a sub-scale business the asset was undesirable to MediaForEurope (MFE), the pan-European media holding company that acquired German broadcaster ProSieben last year, since its strategy involves reaching scale across European advertising markets. But RTL has looked to build both advertising and subscription growth in Germany, using its subscription business to counter the cyclical and volatile nature of the European TV ad market.
Godard adds that Sky’s talks to acquire UK broadcaster ITV serves as “vindication” of RTL’s strategy, combining the pay-TV subscription model with a growing digital ads business.
An enviable position
The acquisition also gives RTL “a lot of options” in terms of partnerships and bundling, according to Godard, not least because Sky already distributes Netflix in the DACH region, bundling the streaming service in its Sky TV subscription pack.
Godard says this effectively makes RTL “the number one partner of Netflix in Germany”, and sets up the company to strike further partnerships with the likes of DAZN, Disney+ and Paramount+.
“With Sky, RTL becomes the main aggregator in Germany,” comments Godard. “They become the main pay-TV operator in Germany, and I think they are now in a position, certainly in total subscription revenue, to rival Netflix or Amazon.”
Meanwhile Sky Deutschland owns the rights to the Bundesliga until 2029, with Sky and DAZN paying a combined €1.12 billion per season for the German football league.
“I think the Bundesliga is the one product that the streamers won’t take away from you, or it will take quite a while before the streamers are ready to throw €1 billion at the Bundesliga per year,” says Godard. “And so RTL is solidifying its position in Germany in a way that I think ITV or TF1 could only envy in their markets.”
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