BSkyB expects to double its digital revenues

BSkyB expects to nearly double the amount of money it makes from digital subscribers in the next five years.

Speaking on Sky News, chief executive Tony Ball said the average revenue per subscriber is £286 at present.

But he predicted this would go up to £400 in the next five years, with £50 of this coming from its interactive offerings.

Mr Ball was commenting on the satellite broadcaster's year-end figures, which show it has met its target of signing up five million digital subscribers ahead of schedule.

As of yesterday, a total of 5.3 million people had signed up for BSkyB's direct to home (DTH) package, rather than through cable.

BSkyB says revenues in the six months to December 31 from such sales moved ahead 33% to £715m, while the number of DTH subscribers rose by a record 538,000.

But the company turned in pre-tax losses of £260.2m, compared with last year's £61.5m loss. Before one-off costs and goodwill, pre-tax losses were £112.1m.

It blames these on wider exposure to losses from its British Interactive Broadcasting arm, which operates the Open digital service, and a £70m one-off loss relating to the disposal of its stake in German pay TV channel KirchPayTV and a £25m write-off on its investment in new media.

The broadcaster says the total number of subscribers in the UK and Ireland to Sky's channels increased by 512,000 to 9.8 million in the final three months of 2000.

And Sky says its audience share continued to rise, compared with that of other terrestrial channels. Sky channels' share of viewing in all UK homes increased to 5.7%, compared with 4.5% last time.