Sky’s 'Super Sunday' viewers fall 19%

TV viewership of Sky’s flagship Sunday late-afternoon soccer game has fallen 19% this season, the biggest drop yet in a five-year slide in the UK that raises the risk that a decline in subscribers may follow.

After eight games, the average audience for pay-TV provider’s “Super Sunday” English Premier League audience is 1.03m viewers according to data from the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB). That is down 39% from a peak of 1.68m viewers in 2011-2012.

The 4pm slot, a fixture for Sky since 1992, is part of an overall drop in its Premier League viewership this year, a concern for investors after the company paid £4.17bn (€4.68bn) in its latest three-season contract with the league.

The audience drop highlights the global squeeze on media companies as viewers move online and onto mobile devices.

Sky, whose largest shareholder is Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, is paying record sums to air the world’s richest soccer league and keep ahead of BT Group, which broadcasts some Premier League games.

“Viewership stats such as that can often be seen as a precursor to churn increasing,” said Neil Campling, an analyst at Northern Trust Securities in London, referring to the industry performance indicator for customer attrition.

“These are big changes. These are not two, three percent declines. These are potentially quite significant.”

The BARB data show the full-season average audience has fallen each year since 2011-2012, including the first eight games of the current 2016-2017 season.

Overall, Sky is still adding subscribers, though growth has slowed. It gained 35,000 customers in the UK and Ireland in the fiscal first quarter, about half as many as the 77,000 additions a year earlier.

However, a rising churn rate suggests marketing costs are on the rise, Mr Campling said. With the cost of games rising too, Sky’s operating margins have fallen for four straight years.

In the 2011-2012 season, Sky was paying £4.7m per game. Now, Sky is paying £11.07m per game.

Sky executives have blamed the tough start on competition from the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics and the 2016 European championship.

The company also said BARB data doesn’t include audiences for its Now TV digital service or Sky Go mobile package — figures Sky does not release.