More than 50% of Sky customers now connected

Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch

More than half of all Sky’s customers have now connected their Sky+HD box to broadband, giving them access to the UK pay TV operator’s full range of on-demand services.

Sky said the total number of connected Sky+HD boxes has more than doubled in less than a year, and now stands at 5.4 million of Sky’s 10.6m TV customers.

It said that the customer gains amount to 56,000 new households getting connected every week and that the new milestone follows the launch last summer of Sky’s “big push to drive take-up and usage of connected TV services.”

The news was announced at the EY Sustaining Digital Leadership conference in London this morning, where Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch said: “We see a widening and growing opportunity for Sky. Our market is opening up, getting bigger and broader. By innovating across different platforms, and adopting new technologies, we can create more ways to reach more customers than ever before.”

“Our job is to offer customers the best possible TV experience, making sure that they can watch what they want, when they want, wherever they want. We aim to put Sky at the heart of the ‘digitally connected household’ – to meet customers’ growing desire to consume content on their terms.”

Sky said that in its most recent quarter, on-demand accounted for more than 5% of viewing in connected homes – equivalent to the third most popular linear channel in those homes. On-demand downloads have also more than tripled in the last year.

Sky’s connected customers can access catch-up TV content, watch box sets of series like Game of Thrones, Prison Break and 24, and can also rent or buy recent blockbusters and classic movies through Sky Store.