Sky buys Three and ThreeNow to create New Zealand's most muscular media empire

The Spinoff

4 days ago

WBD has sold its linear and digital TV assets to Sky for $1, giving the pay TV giant a powerful new brand to take on TVNZ. Duncan Greive breaks down the deal.
Pay TV giant Sky has agreed to buy Discovery NZ in a deal which profoundly reshapes the commercial TV and streaming landscape in New Zealand, creating easily the biggest media company in the country by revenue, and potentially by audience too. Discovery NZ houses the second-most-watched free-to-air channel, Three, along with a popular ad-supported streaming service in ThreeNow. It also has eden, Rush and HGTV, more niche channels which play on Freeview and Sky, all joining Sky's huge range of pay-TV and streaming channels.
All changing hands for less than the cost of a month's Netflix. Sky paid just $1 for the assets, which come across debt free, with Sky assuming the ongoing commercial contracts of the business. The Commerce Commission was privately advised, and saw no issue – an unimaginable situation even a few years ago.
It's the second major media company to change hands at that symbolic value in recent years, after Stuff was sold for $1 in 2020. The price indicates that Discovery NZ's parent, WBD, simply wanted to exit the free-to-air business, which had been bought by Discovery from Mediaworks in 2020 for a price described at the time as 'more than a dollar'. Sources familiar with that deal peg it at US$20m, suggesting Sky has got a comparative bargain – or that Discovery overpaid.
For Sky, it's a major move into free-to-air TV and ad-supported streaming, at a time when the company has placed far more emphasis on advertising as part of its revenue mix than ever before (it scooped the Beacon Award for 'best sales team' just last week). While it has long had free-to-air TV through Sky Open (formerly Prime), Three is a much more powerful brand, with far larger audiences, home to smash hits like Married at First Sight and David Lomas Investigates.
It brings Sky into even more direct competition with TVNZ. Historically, despite being the two biggest companies in TV, they were well differentiated. TVNZ was purely ad-supported, big on news and mass entertainment, a minor player in sports. Sky was largely a subscription business, mostly paywalled and big on sports with only a very minor presence in local news.
That changes from August 1, with TVNZ facing down the largest and most formidable direct competitor in its history. Sky has over a million paying customers across pay TV and streaming products like Sky Sport Now and Neon. It now has a major free-to-air presence to both function as a funnel into its pay products, and extend the reach of its advertising.
While Sky Open has functioned as a shop window into Sky for some time, Three and ThreeNow will be a far more powerful version of that proposition, with the ability to take a mix of Sky's sports and entertainment products and attack TVNZ on quality and content mix. That's why longtime former Sky CEO John Fellet sought to buy Three a decade ago.
Three can now put NRL, Super Rugby and cricket head-to-head with TVNZ's prime time line-up, and given that live sports is one of the last big draws for linear TV audiences, it represents a very powerful tool to grow Three's audience. For NZ on Air too, the consolidated business is a much more interesting and powerful way of reaching New Zealanders.
It's not uncomplicated for Sky. The declining sale price tells you just how difficult pureplay ad-supported media models are now. And it adds yet more brands and platforms to what is already a very complicated mix. Sky now operates two different boxes, a puck, Sky Go, Sky Sport Now, Neon and ThreeNow from a technology standpoint. Netflix just has Netflix. Rationalising that will be a priority for Sky CEO Sophie Moloney and her team.
There remain a number of other unresolved questions. Sky and NZ Rugby have still not announced a renewal of their long-term broadcast deal, though industry sources suggest it is signed, with only haggling over free-to-air screening remaining. Three and ThreeNow loom as potential solutions to some of NZ Rugby's audience accessibility issues, even if it reduces by one the plausible buyers of its rights. Similarly, Three currently contracts Stuff to produce its 6pm news bulletin. That has had challenging ratings for much of the year, but remains an important part of a well-rounded product offering and starts the channel's evening programming.
Aaron Ibbotson, a senior analyst at Forsyth Barr, is a fan of the transaction for Sky. He says 'the deal makes a lot of sense. They're not paying anything for it, and there would be natural synergies across broadcasting and content.' He contrasts it with a failed attempted acquisition of Mediaworks in 2022, saying that the Discovery NZ deal is 'closer to what Sky knows well, its core business'. Sky's shares are up 11c in early trading today.
It's the latest big change to a media ownership environment which is suddenly very fluid. Earlier this year, Jim Grenon launched a hostile board takeover attempt after buying 10% of NZME, which ultimately rolled the company's chair and reshaped its governance. Then QMS completed a takeover of outdoor and radio giant Mediaworks, Stuff sold 50% of its digital arm to auction site TradeMe, while Are Media, New Zealand's biggest magazine publisher, went up for sale.
New Zealand's commercial media has long been considered too fragmented, given the size of the market. It now has effectively two major TV operators, two radio networks and two scale digital news providers. All staff are being ported across, with Three's leader Juliet Peterson now reporting into Sky CEO Moloney, but over time there will be efficiency gains from accounting to sales to programming.
Yes, efficiency gains is code for job losses, of which the media has endured too many in recent years. But the real battle is not with cross-town rivals, it's with unregulated tech giants. The question is, will we even have local news and entertainment products at all? For an embattled local media, which endured a cataclysmic 2024, this deal creates a powerful and diversified new media giant – one which poses challenges for TVNZ, but should result in a more robust local media landscape as a result.