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T he media titan plans to shake up the world of TV viewing with the launch of Sky Glass
Sky UK and Europe CEO Stephen van Rooyen. Picture by Brendan Moran
The new Sky Glass service will impress
The Sky Glass matching remote controls
A Sky TV camera at Nowlan Park for a Kilkenny hurling match
The Sky Glass colour range
Sitting in a showhome near the leafy Dublin suburb of Donnybrook, across the road from RTÉ’s Montrose HQ, media giant Sky’s UK and Europe boss Stephen Van Rooyen talks excitedly about his plans to shake up the world of television.
V an Rooyen, who joined Sky in 2006 from rival Virgin Media after a meeting with media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s son James, has made the journey over to Dublin from London to talk about the Irish launch of what was once just a “crazy idea”.
That “crazy idea” is Sky Glass – a television built and designed by Sky.
The 49-year-old South African laughs as he thinks back to his first design meetings about the product with his colleague Fraser Stirling, Sky’s global chief product officer.
It represented a move into the unknown for the UK-headquartered telecommunications and media behemoth.
“I said to Fraser why I thought it was important that we consider building our own television product,” recalls van Rooyen. “He looked at me and said, ‘Leave it with me’.”
Two and a half years and “hundreds of millions worth” of investment later, Stirling and his team took what was a sketch on a piece of paper and built Sky’s first physical television. Sky Glass was born, launching in the UK last year.
On August 25, backed by a sizable marketing investment, Sky Glass will launch in Ireland.
The new Sky Glass service will impress
“I think this is pretty significant for all of Sky,” says van Rooyen, who became the CEO for the UK and Ireland in 2016.
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“As I said, watching TV has become difficult – it has become tricky for a viewer – so we have stepped in to try and simplify that, and make it easier for a customer to watch.
“Sky is a company about innovation and evolution. So we thought it was important to do something bold.”
Sky Glass has been built with Sky’s broadcasting product inside, allowing customers to access Sky TV over WiFi – removing the need for a satellite dish or set-top box.
Van Rooyen says this will be significant in serving Irish customers, particularly in parts of Dublin, Cork, or Limerick, where some houses can’t install dishes for planning or line-of-sight reasons.
Van Rooyen and Sky Ireland have also been busy securing carriage deals with Irish broadcasters, including RTÉ, Virgin and TG4, to help showcase the best of their offerings live and online through streaming services available via Sky Glass.
Sky Glass will also have BBC content that can be officially accessed on-demand in the Irish market for the first time, similar to iPlayer.
The Sky Glass home page attempts to make the best live and online streaming content easier to find for viewers. This includes from streamers such as Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, Prime Video and others, though some will require additional subscriptions.
The service will tailor the home page to a viewer’s tastes over time, making switching between streaming applications and live TV as easy as changing a channel.
While impressive, Sky Glass does come at a premium price point. Depending on the size (small is 43”, medium 55”, and large 65”), prices are €755, €999 and €1,299 – a sizable outlay during a cost-of-living crisis.
Van Rooyen and the team recognised the premium price tag, so they developed packages that customers could add to their Sky TV subscription instead. Subscription prices start at €15 a month over four years for the small set and rise to €52 a month over two years for the large set, with a €31 fee applying at the outset.
The Sky Glass colour range
Van Rooyen believes that Sky Glass has the potential to shake up the Irish market.
“It’s another step in our long-running investment in Ireland,” he says.
“Our commitment to investing in Ireland has remained unwavering through the last decade. This, committing to launching a mobile phone service, and our investment in retail are just three more very clear bits of evidence that Ireland remains important to us.”
Sky, owned since 2018 by US telecoms and media giant Comcast, has offered its services here for around 25 years. It has also become a significant employer.
Sky Ireland, headed by JD Buckley, has grown from having around 40 staff in 2012 to employing just under 1,000 people, including about 750 at its head office on Burlington Road in Dublin. Van Rooyen says that he is proud of Sky’s contribution to the Irish economy.
“The Irish operation has been underpinned by this constant thirst for Sky to evolve, develop and offer more,” he says.
“If you look at our history, our commitment here has been to try and meet the market locally – and to take the innovation across our organisation, and our scale, and bring it to bear on the Irish marketplace.”
Sky Ireland has undoubtedly benefitted from its scale, evolving into a successful business across home pay television, broadband and other telephony services.
According to the latest results, UK-based Sky Subscribers Services Ltd had revenues of £526m here last year, up by around £16m from the previous year. It recorded close to 700,000 subscribers – a sizable chunk of the market.
Even with that sizable chunk, van Rooyen is not done. He believes Sky has further to grow.
“Time will tell if the experience you get from the product is enough for us to add more subscribers,” he says.
“We believe we can get even bigger on broadband – we are still not top of the league table in terms of the numbers of households we serve.
"Our investment in fibre is a good endorsement of our belief there, so winning more broadband households over time is an obvious place, I think.”
Van Rooyen will bring Sky Mobile into the Irish market in 2023. The mobile business, which will utilise Vodafone’s network, will be focussed toward the consumer end of the market, using some learnings from the UK that will be tailored toward the Irish consumers.
The Sky Glass matching remote controls
“Entering into the mobile business gives us an entire greenfield opportunity to win more share,” he says.
Sky faces stiff competition from the likes of Eir, Virgin and Vodafone. So how does van Rooyen feel about the sector?
“I think competition in each of our territories is tough, but we love competition,” he says.
“Being pushed to do better from time to time – like with Sky Glass – is what Sky is all about. We have always welcomed our competitors pushing us to be better.
“I think we have done well here. You have seen us, as an organisation, continue to grow – whether that is in terms of revenue, employees or investments.”
Sky’s bread and butter is its home TV subscription packages, allowing customers access to traditional live television. But with the rise of streamers, ihow does Van Rooyen feel about the future of live TV?
“We have our own views,” he says. “We think sports, news and certain shows will continue to be live, and that is fine – but our job is to make a product or service that allows the customer to choose what they want to do.
“We have an incredibly strong relationship with pretty much all the streamers. It manifests itself in a number of ways.
"Firstly, you see a lot of the streamers integrate into our packaging. If you buy the Ultimate TV package from us – which includes all the Sky content and Netflix in one bundle – then we gain, and they gain.
A Sky TV camera at Nowlan Park for a Kilkenny hurling match
“We have integrated the streamers fully into the Sky Glass service. Each one has its own technical structure and construct. We have collapsed that, and made it easy for the consumer to have the best experience.”
Economic storm clouds are also on the horizon, with fears of a cost of living crisis growing by the day. What does he think this means for Sky’s products and services, which are often considered to be at the premium end of the market?
“I think there is a broad-based concern for any business leader as to what the cost-of-living crisis means here and across Europe,” he says.
Concerns in hand, has Sky seen consumers make choices on its products?
“I think most sectors have felt the onset of the cost-of-living crisis,” he says.
“The good news for an organisation like ours is that we have a price point for everybody. Whether it is our brand directly or through the Now TV streaming product.”
As regards Irish content, van Rooyen says Sky is committed to making and producing more shows here. It plans to double its investment in original content across Europe by 2024. What could that look like in Ireland?
“We’d like to see more of the stories we make either reflect Irish culture or, if nothing else, be used as a backdrop for other stories to be told.
"So our commitment to more production here on the drama and comedy side, through Sky Studios, will probably ramp up over the next number of years.
“Those are the places; I don’t think you’ll see us build a Sky News Ireland service. We’ll do more of what we already do, but we will try and provide the opportunity to make more shows, and interesting productions here.”
Van Rooyen says merger and acquisition activity had been on the back burner in recent years, but he “liked to think” that it would become more active over the next decade.
This could include Ireland, if the right opportunity emerged.
With economic headwinds starting to swirl, how does van Rooyen feel about Sky’s Irish future?
“Over the long-term, I’m very optimistic,” he says. “I think the plan here is the best I’ve seen, in all the time I’ve been working on the Irish business since 2010.
“My optimism, looking through what is likely to be a difficult economic period everywhere in Europe, is at an all-time high,” he adds. “It’s there for us to continue to win.”
Position: Executive vice president and chief executive officer, UK & Europe of Sky
Education: Attended university in Queensland, Australia, doing commerce and law
Family: Wife Kathryn and son Zac
Favourite book: Napoleon: A Biography by Frank McLynn
Favourite TV show: Mad Men
What would be the most important business lesson you have learned to date?
“People. Work with people to solve big problems.”
What would you say to someone starting out in this sector now?
“Be optimistic about the effect that media has in making the world a better place. Because it’s contrary to what people actually think about it right now.
"They think about fake news and everything else — but it’s a great platform to tell good stories, and I think it has an incredibly important function.”
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