Sky Deutschland only acquired 120,000 new subscribers in the last three months of 2015, considerably less than the 214,000 new customers the German pay-TV broadcaster reported in the important Christmas quarter 2014.
The strong increase in 2014 was based on special effects, according to a Sky Deutschland spokesman, mainly the takeover of former Telekom Entertain Bundesliga subscribers and less 24 month contracts up for renewal than in 2015.
In total, Sky Deutschland had 4.49 million subscribers on December 31, 2015. One year ago, the figure amounted to 4.12 million.
While turnover rose by 10% to €963 million, Sky Deutschland didn’t manage to improve its operating profit in the second half of 2015. The loss increased from €19.5 million to €47.3 million which the broadcaster mainly attributes to increasing programming costs of €23.6 million relating to the Bundesliga rights.
Later this year, Sky Deutschland wants to launch a new Sky+ HD box offering updated features and technology. The box will be compatible with the functionality of the Sky Q box to be introduced in the UK in February 2016, giving customers the ability to access Sky Q features at a later date.
