Sky setting sights on further innovation, says Darroch

Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch

Innovation will continue to be at the heart of Sky’s business, with the company constantly seeking to renew itself and embrace change, according to company CEO Jeremy Darroch.

Speaking at MIPTV in Cannes, France, Darroch said that while the whole experience of in-home entertainment has already got “so much better” in the past 10 years, this trend is only going to continue.

“There’s never been a better time to be in the industry that we’re in. The demand from customers for great content seems to be insatiable. They want more of it, and a broader range of that content, I think, than ever before,” said Darroch.

Citing previous developments like Sky+, Sky HD and Sky 3D, the Sky boss said that “innovation in the viewing experience has always been at the heart of what we’ve done as a business,” and that this has been driven by Sky’s appetite to “raise the bar”.

“Just as we innovate on the satellite platform, we’ve got lots of plans to innovate over-the-top in some of our new services like Now TV or Sky Online or Sky Mobile,” said Darroch when asked about Sky’s future innovation plans.

“I think the future is less about any one singular idea and about our ability to do multiple things. And in doing multiple things to really expand the whole market in which we compete and operate.”

Darroch claimed that Sky’s aim is to reach as many customers as possible – be that directly through its own retail services, through its satellite service or using OTT distribution.

He also failed to rule out more investments in production companies, following Sky’s acquisition of a 60% stake in US-based Jupiter Entertainment in March, and its purchase of 70% of UK-based Love Productions last July. However, he said doing more of these deals was not an imperative.

“Largely that will be driven, I think, by Sky Vision and [the] broadening out [of] our distribution arm. It’s something that I’m open-minded to but in terms of the content that we actually want to acquire to put on screen, we really want to be very flexible and agile and work right across the industry,” said Darroch.