Sky Italia reached 4.5 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter. An increase of 70,000 net households on the quarter and 342,000 net households year on year.
Already planned are a series of new promotional offers that are already beginning to impact on the costs of the DTH platform. Third quarter operating income of $97 million (€62.86m) was also hit by reduced revenues from mobile services. Although operating income increased by 7% compared to a year ago, this was largely attributable to local currency growth of 6%.
The numbers were released as part of parent News Corp’s third quarter financial results. They also showed a fall in net earnings from affiliates of $146m to $109m, largely attributable to BSkyB’s writedown of its investment in ITV and a decrease in contributions from DirecTV following the share swap with Liberty Media.
