Sky Germany announces content plan for a new era

Bundesliga extended to 2025; Formula 1 exclusive; Entertainment line-up expanded

Sky Germany today announced a major new content plan to shakeup TV in Germany and take Sky into a new era. Sky will deliver its plan through a combination of partnerships and development of its entertainment, movies and sports offering – and it starts with an extension of Sky’s deal with the Bundesliga to 2025.

The numbers behind Sky’s stellar content plan:

• The #1 destination for sports fans: exclusive Bundesliga and Formula 1
• Four brand new Sky channels: over 2,000 hours of additional entertainment from Sky – on top of 10,000 hours provided today
• Over a thousand movies: MGM, Constantin, Tobis deals extended
• Double the number of Sky Originals: building on success of Das Boot and Der Pass
• Over 5,000 hours of factual content: including incredible content from Discovery, as deal is extended, including for the Discovery Channel
• ...and it is all in one place on the world’s #1 platform Sky Q, together with Netflix, DAZN, ARD, ZDF, YouTube, Spotify, and Disney+ coming early 2021

Devesh Raj, Chief Executive Officer of Sky Deutschland: “We plan to shake things up and excite German consumers with an unmatched TV experience. Our aim is to offer something for everyone and start a new era for TV in Germany.”

“Sky will continue to be the leading place for sport fans, as we offer exclusive Bundesliga, heart-racing Formula 1 and much, much more. For those that love stories we have thousands of films from the biggest movie studios; our award-winning Sky Originals, and content from all the best apps, like Netflix, and Disney+ coming in early 2021, all available on the world’s best platform, Sky Q.”

1. The #1 destination for sports fans

Sky will continue to be the home of live sport – including more UHD - with new deals signed for exclusive Bundesliga and Formula 1.

Sky will be the only place to watch the most important Bundesliga matches including the top match on Saturday evening live. Sky will show live 511 Bundesliga matches across both leagues, 83% of the total number of matches, with coverage throughout the whole weekend, from Friday to Sunday.

The award-winning Sky Conference for both leagues will remain exclusively on Sky as well as all single matches on Saturday afternoon. Sky will show highlights of all other matches in a new Bundesliga highlights programme at the weekend.

For the first time in Germany, Sky has secured exclusive broadcasting rights to Formula 1 for the 2021 to 2024 seasons - from the first free practice sessions to the races on Sunday, with all races and most qualifying sessions available in UHD. With “Sky Sport F1 HD”, Sky will launch the first ever linear 24/7 motorsport channel on German TV dedicated exclusively to motor racing content. In addition, Sky will broadcast four selected races per season free for everyone and will present a 30-minute highlight show after each race on free-to-air channel Sky Sport News HD.

Sky plans to introduce millions of people across Germany to the joy of F1 and motorsport by providing engaging digital and social media content across its platforms, helping to grow the second largest fan community after football.

Already starting this season, Sky will show all Formula 2 and Formula 3 races for the first time as well as the Porsche Super Cup.

This will be complemented with a ground-breaking, viewer experience to allow fans to get even closer to the action, leveraging innovations from Sky UK and Sky Italy.

This adds to Sky’s current extensive live sports line-up, which includes the complete Premier League exclusive on Sky, UEFA Champions League until 2021, all matches of the DFB Pokal, the Liqui Moly Handball Bundesliga, world-class tennis from Wimbledon and the ATP Tour and all major golf tournaments including the Four Majors and the Ryder Cup.

2. Four brand new Sky channels

Over the next 18 months Sky will launch four new Sky channels bringing an additional 2,000 hours of linear and on demand content to its customers:

• Sky Comedy: including popular local and US comedy series
• Sky Crime: focused on the best international true crime programming
• Sky Nature: extensive nature and animal documentaries from around the world
• Sky Documentaries: the best documentaries from history, sport and biographies

Sky has also announced the renewal of its partnership with Discovery, delivering hundreds of high quality documentaries from one of the biggest international factual content producers.

3. Over a thousand movies

Sky has extended its deal with MGM and renewed deals with local independent movie producers, Constantin and Tobis – building on existing agreements with Warner, Sony, Fox and NBC Universal.

This year Sky is exclusively premiering two-thirds of the 2019 top 100 box office movies shortly after cinema release, underpinning its customer commitment of “a new movie every day” and providing German customers the best movie service in the market.

4. Double the number of Sky Originals

Over the next three years Sky will double the number of local German Sky Originals. Produced through Sky Studios, Sky’s Europe wide production powerhouse, the new Sky Originals will build on the successes of Das Boot, Babylon Berlin, Der Pass and Acht Tage. In addition, Sky will show more international Sky Originals, including popular and award-winning shows such as Chernobyl, The Young Pope, Gomorrah, and many others. Sky will add up to eight new high quality Sky Original drama or comedy series to its platform per quarter.

Sky is already the exclusive home of the best US drama from HBO and Showtime, featuring shows such as Game of Thrones, Westworld and Billions.

5. All in one place on the world’s #1 platform, Sky Q

All of this content will be aggregated on Sky Q, along with free-to-air channels, pay channels, box sets, on-demand shows, movies, Sky channels, Sky Originals and streaming apps such as Netflix, Dazn, YouTube, ARD/ZDF, and Disney+ coming in early 2021.

Sky Q helps customers find the content they want through world-class search, personalised recommendations and navigation features such as voice search and Restart, all in a seamless experience.

Sky will also significantly increase its coverage of UHD content across sports and entertainment, further underpinning its leadership as the premium TV experience in Germany.

Notes to Editors

For more information, please contact:

• Jack Bates, Corporate Communications Manager: jack.bates@sky.uk 

About Sky

With 24 million customers across seven countries, Sky is Europe’s leading media and entertainment company and is proud to be part of the Comcast group. Our 32,000 employees help connect our customers to the very best entertainment, sports, news, arts and to our own local, original content.

Following the success of Sky originals like Chernobyl, we plan to double our investment in original content by 2024. We’re also developing a new TV and movie studio, Sky Studios Elstree, which is expected to lead to the creation of over 2,000 new jobs and generate an additional £3 billion of production investment in UK creative sector in the first five years alone.

Our technology allows customers to watch what they want, when they want, how they want, and as we connect millions of families to content they love, we believe it is our responsibility to do it safely. That’s why we offer services like Sky Broadband Buddy and the Sky Kids app. And our online streaming service, NOW TV, brings viewers all the enjoyment of Sky with the flexibility of a contract-free service.

We also believe that a company of our scale has a responsibility that goes beyond our business, and into the community. We recently announced a series of commitments to help tackle racial injustice and improve diversity and inclusion. To ensure the commitments are delivered, Sky will invest £10million per year across its markets for each of the next three years. We’re committed to being Europe’s first net zero carbon entertainment company by 2030 – two decades before we have to – and we’re an inclusive employer recognised by The Times and Stonewall for our commitment to diversity.