Sky is set to buy Virgin’s TV business

Sky has emerged as the favourite to buy Virgin Media Television, which owns brands such as Living and Virgin1 as well as the sales house IDS.

The rival broadcasters look set to strike a deal for £160 million, despite being involved in a bitter dispute last year, which resulted in each company taking off the other’s channels from their platforms.

Other bidders failed to go beyond the £100 million mark, including Channel 4 and Five owner RTL, according to a report in the Financial Times.

Sky is looking to boost its content line-up, targeting both male and female audiences, with the acquisition of new channels such as Living and Bravo.

IDS will also come as part of the Virgin TV business, however, it is expected to continue selling inventory across the Virgin TV channels.

Earlier this month, Virgin reported adding 7,100 new subscribers in Q1 but saw revenues fall below £936 million due to a poor performance in its business communication division (see Virgin Media gains 7,100 customers in Q1).

However, Virgin’s new additions fell well below those added by Sky in the same period (see BSkyB adds 80,000 new customers despite downturn).

Sky added an impressive 80,000 new customers during the first quarter, which helped boost its adjusted revenues to £3.96 billion for the nine months ending March 31 – a 7% year on year increase.