Who Owns ITV?

ITV has no owner today — but it is being broken in two. ITV plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange with no controlling shareholder, and as a listed company it files no PSC register. In 2026 it agreed to sell its Media & Entertainment division — the ITV channels themselves — to Sky, owned by Comcast, for a reported £1.6bn. ITV Studios is not part of that deal and remains listed. The transaction had not completed as at this verification date. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns ITV?

ITV plc is owned by its shareholders. No person, company or state controls it, and no holder is near the 25% at which UK rules record significant control.

The company is ITV PLC (04967001), incorporated 18 November 2003 — the date Carlton and Granada merged to create a single ITV. Beneath it sit the operating companies at White City, including ITV Broadcasting Limited (00955957), incorporated 11 June 1969, whose number is the surviving thread of the old regional franchise system.

As a company with voting shares on a regulated market, ITV plc is exempt from the PSC regime. Companies House therefore holds no ownership record for it at all — the same position as Vodafone, Tesco, BP and Barclays elsewhere on this site.

Parent company and ownership structure

ITV plc has no parent. What it has, from 2026, is a buyer for half of itself.

The structure of the deal is the part that matters and the part most easily got wrong:

• ITV Media & Entertainment — the ITV channels, ITVX and the advertising business — is being sold to Sky, and therefore to Comcast.
• ITV Studios — the production arm, which makes programmes for ITV and for its competitors worldwide — is not included and stays a separately listed company.

Reported terms are £1.2bn up front with a further £200m payable in the first half of 2028, contingent on advertising revenue targets, alongside ITV Studios’ acquisition of Love Productions. ITV first told the market its M&E division was under offer in November 2025, and terms were agreed roughly nine months later, with completion targeted for the following year.

So the answer to “who owns ITV” is on the point of splitting into two answers: Comcast for the channels, public shareholders for the production company.

Major shareholders or controlling interests

ITV’s register has long been notable for one holding: Liberty Global, the international cable group, built a stake of close to 10% from 2015 — large enough to matter in any takeover, never large enough to control, and never registered anywhere on Companies House because of the listed-company exemption.

The rest sits with index managers and institutional investors holding on behalf of their funds. No family, no state, no founder.

ITV’s position is worth contrasting with the other British broadcasters covered on this site. Channel 5 is wholly owned by Paramount Skydance; Sky by Comcast; Channel 4 is publicly owned; the BBC is a chartered corporation. ITV was the last major British commercial broadcaster in independent, widely held British hands — and the M&E sale ends that.

Other media assets in the group

ITV plc today owns the ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and ITVBe channels, ITVX, and ITV Studios, which makes Love Island, The Voice and a large international slate.

ITV Studios is the reason the deal is structured as it is. It sells programmes to broadcasters everywhere, including ITV’s rivals, and its value is not tied to British advertising — which makes it a different business with different buyers, and a plausible standalone listed company.

ITV holds a stake in Britbox International and has interests in a number of production labels. It does not own UKTV, which belongs to the BBC, nor Channel 4. And it does not own World of Sport Wrestling Limited (10605394) in the sense people assume — that company, previously named ITV World of Sport Wrestling Limited, is registered at ITV White City and carries the name of a programme, not a wrestling business.

Ownership history

ITV was created in 1955 as a federated network of regional franchise holders — Granada, Thames, Carlton, Central, Yorkshire, Anglia and others — each a separate company with its own licence. Consolidation ran for four decades.

• 1969 — ITV Broadcasting Limited incorporated, one of the surviving companies from the franchise era.
• 2003 — Carlton and Granada merge to form ITV plc, ending the regional company structure.
• 2010 — BSkyB‘s stake, built in 2006 to block an NTL bid, is ordered reduced after a competition ruling.
• 2015 onward — Liberty Global builds a stake approaching 10%.
• November 2025 — ITV discloses its M&E division is under offer.
• 2026 — terms agreed with Sky; completion targeted for the following year.

There is an irony on the record here. Sky was ordered by regulators in 2010 to cut the ITV stake it had bought in 2006; sixteen years later it agreed to buy the channels outright. Whether that clears the same competition scrutiny is the open question of the transaction.

Sources and verification

The company numbers and incorporation dates are Companies House records, checkable directly. They establish ITV’s corporate history and, deliberately, nothing about its ownership.

Two limits. Companies House records nothing about who owns ITV plc, because listed companies are exempt — shareholders are disclosed instead through major holdings notifications to the exchange and the annual report, and every percentage is a snapshot from a filing date.

And the Sky transaction was agreed but not completed as at this verification date, with regulatory review outstanding. This page does not assert that Comcast owns the ITV channels; it states that terms have been agreed to sell them. ITV’s broadcast licences are regulated by Ofcom, whose approval is a separate matter from any share purchase. Companies House does not verify most filed information.