Who Owns NOW?

NOW is owned by Sky, and therefore by Comcast. It is not a separate company — it is Sky’s contract-free streaming brand, launched in 2012 as NOW TV and renamed NOW in 2021. Companies House records the Sky chain: Sky UK Limited under Sky Limited, the former Sky plc, with the trail stopping before it reaches Comcast in Philadelphia. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Now TV?

Sky owns it, and Sky belongs to Comcast Corporation, the American cable and media group.

There is no NOW company to look up. The service is a brand of Sky’s UK business rather than a subsidiary with its own registration — which is why searching Companies House for it is unproductive, and why this page traces Sky’s chain instead:

1. Sky UK Limited (02906991) — the British operating company
2. Sky Limited — its controller at 75% or more, the former Sky plc
3. Comcast Corporation — above that, and named on no UK filing

Sky Limited’s earlier name is a small piece of history in itself: Sky plc ceased to be a plc when Comcast took it private and its shares left the London Stock Exchange in 2018.

Parent company and ownership structure

NOW exists because of a regulatory and commercial problem rather than a corporate one. Sky’s satellite business required a contract, a dish and an installation; NOW was created to sell the same content without any of them, over the internet, month by month.

So a NOW subscriber and a Sky subscriber are customers of the same company, buying substantially the same programmes, on different terms. The brands are separated deliberately, and the ownership is identical.

That has a practical consequence worth stating: a NOW Sports membership carries the same underlying rights as Sky Sports, because the rights are held once, by Sky, and sold through two brands.

Major shareholders or controlling interests

Comcast is listed on NASDAQ and widely held, but it is not without a controlling holder. The Roberts family holds Class B shares carrying a fixed one-third of the total voting power, written into the company’s constitution and not diluted by share issues.

A fixed constitutional third cannot be eroded, which in practice makes the holder unremovable. It is a distinct mechanism from the vote multipliers used by Alphabet, from Nike’s board-election classes and from the loyalty voting at Kering and Stellantis — all documented elsewhere on this site.

None of it appears on Companies House. The UK register names Sky Limited and goes no further, so the family in Philadelphia that ultimately controls NOW is invisible on any British filing.

Other media assets in the group

Sky owns NOW, Sky Sports, Sky News, Sky Atlantic, Sky Cinema and Sky Showcase, plus Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia. Comcast’s wider group includes NBCUniversal and Peacock.

Two relationships are routinely mistaken for ownership. Sky does not own the programmes on NOW that come from HBO — those reach British viewers through a distribution agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery, covered on this site’s HBO profile, and the agreement can end. And TNT Sports is a joint venture in which Sky holds an interest alongside Warner Bros. Discovery, not a Sky brand.

Sky also agreed in 2026 to acquire ITV‘s Media & Entertainment division — the ITV channels and ITVX — in a transaction that had not completed at this verification date, and which is covered separately on this site.

Ownership history

NOW’s ownership history is Sky’s, and Sky’s turns on a single afternoon in 2018.

• 2012 — NOW TV launches, as Sky’s answer to Netflix and to the contract-free market.
• 2016–2018 — 21st Century Fox, having already held around 39% of Sky, bids for full control; the bid is referred to the Competition and Markets Authority over media plurality, with Sky News the central concern.
• September 2018 — after a Takeover Panel blind auction, Comcast outbids Fox and wins Sky for a reported £30bn.
• 2021 — NOW TV is renamed NOW.

The 2018 auction is one of very few occasions on which control of a major British broadcaster was decided by a regulated sealed-bid process rather than by negotiation. Rupert Murdoch, having pursued Sky for more than a decade, lost it in a single afternoon — and NOW passed to an American owner with it.

Sources and verification

The Sky company numbers and PSC entries are Companies House records and can be checked directly. NOW itself has no company number, because it is a brand rather than a company — which is the single most useful fact on this page for anyone trying to research it.

Two limits. Comcast is not named on any UK filing: the register stops at Sky Limited, and the American parent is established by the 2018 transaction and Comcast’s own SEC disclosures. And Comcast’s Class B voting structure is a US constitutional arrangement disclosed in its proxy statement, entirely outside British records.

Sky’s broadcast licences and the editorial undertakings given in 2018 are matters for Ofcom and the Secretary of State respectively. Companies House does not verify most filed information.