Who Owns Sky News?

Sky News is owned by Comcast, the American cable and media group, through Sky. Companies House records the chain: Sky News Limited is held at 75% or more by Sky UK Limited, which is held at 75% or more by Sky Limited. Comcast won Sky in a rare regulated auction in 2018, outbidding Rupert Murdoch’s Fox. Comcast is itself controlled by the Roberts family through a fixed one-third of the votes. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Sky News?

The company is SKY NEWS LIMITED (09591953), incorporated 14 May 2015 and registered at Grant Way, Isleworth — Sky’s headquarters.

Its sole person with significant control is Sky UK Limited (02906991) at 75% or more of shares and votes with the right to appoint and remove directors.

The register holds a trap in the name. An earlier SKY NEWS LIMITED, company 02062522, was dissolved on 29 July 2014, and the current company took the name the following year. Two companies, one name, different numbers — the pattern this site has now found at Boots, Sky, Iceland, Whitbread, South East Water, Jaguar, Vodafone and Channel 5.

Parent company and ownership structure

The chain recorded at Companies House:

1. Sky News Limited (09591953) — the newsroom
2. Sky UK Limited (02906991) — 75%+
3. Sky Limited — 75%+

Sky Limited is the former Sky plc, renamed after Comcast took it private and its shares left the London Stock Exchange. Above it the chain runs to Comcast Corporation in Philadelphia, and the UK register stops before reaching it.

Sky News sits inside this structure with an unusual protection. Its editorial independence is secured by undertakings given to the UK government as a condition of the 2018 takeover — commitments on funding and on the appointment of an independent editorial board, designed to insulate the newsroom from its owner. Those undertakings are a regulatory instrument, not a feature of the ownership structure, and they are what makes Sky News different from any other asset in the Comcast group.

Major shareholders or controlling interests

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

That is a distinct mechanism from the vote multipliers used by Alphabet and Roblox, from Nike’s board-election classes, and from the French and Dutch loyalty voting covered elsewhere on this site. A fixed constitutional third cannot be eroded, which in practice makes the holder unremovable.

So Sky News’ ultimate controller is a family in Philadelphia holding roughly a third of the votes in a company whose shares they largely do not own. None of this appears on Companies House: the UK register names Sky Limited and goes no further.

Other media assets in the group

Sky owns Sky News, Sky Sports, Sky Atlantic, Sky Cinema and Sky Showcase in Britain, along with Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia, and it holds a stake in ITV.

Comcast’s wider holdings include NBCUniversal — NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Universal Pictures and the Universal theme parks — and the Peacock streaming service.

Sky News is therefore a sister company to NBC News and MSNBC in America, without any shared editorial control, and the UK undertakings exist precisely to keep it that way.

Sky is not connected to Sky Mobile‘s network, which runs on capacity bought from O2, nor — despite frequent confusion — to any of the unrelated companies that have used the Sky name.

Ownership history

Sky began as Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Television, which merged with British Satellite Broadcasting in 1990 to form BSkyB. Murdoch’s News Corporation, later 21st Century Fox, held around 39% — a large minority that gave effective control without full ownership.

• 2011 — Murdoch’s bid for full control collapses amid the phone-hacking scandal.
• 2016–2018 — Fox tries again; the bid is referred to the Competition and Markets Authority over media plurality concerns, with Sky News the central issue.
• September 2018 — after a government-ordered blind auction, Comcast outbids Fox and wins Sky for a reported £30bn.

The 2018 auction is worth understanding properly. It was conducted under the Takeover Panel’s supervision because two bidders were deadlocked, and it is one of very few occasions on which control of a major British broadcaster has been decided by a regulated sealed-bid process rather than by negotiation. Murdoch, having pursued Sky for more than a decade, lost it in a single afternoon.

Sources and verification

The company numbers, the 2015 incorporation, the dissolution of the earlier Sky News Limited and both PSC entries come from Companies House and can be checked by number.

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 the UK register.

The editorial undertakings given in 2018 are held by the Secretary of State and are a matter of public record separate from Companies House, which does not verify most filed information. Sky News’ broadcast licence is regulated by Ofcom.