Sky adds 46,000 new TV customers in three months

British Sky Broadcasting has increased its lead as the biggest subscription television service and has made more progress in selling other services like internet and phone deals to its customers.

Sky now has 6m homes connected to its TV, internet and telephone packages, having added 760,000 new subscriptions in the past three months, up 8pc on the previous quarter. Of these, 46,000 took out a new TV package.

The average Sky customer now has 3.1 of the firm’s products and pays £576 a year, up £17 on last year. The firm, like many TV and telecoms operators, is working hard to cross-promote its products, and now has 37pc of its customers in a "triple-play" deal with at least three services.

The company said the Ryder Cup had proven popular, with 4.1m people tuning in to Sky’s channel dedicated to the tournament. Sky said the final day of play commanded the largest share of the audience that day.

The number of On Demand downloads more than trebled to 257m in the quarter as Sky added more box sets to its library including US dramas The West Wing and True Blood.

Revenues in the three months to the end of September totalled £1.93bn, up 6pc on the same quarter last year, with a price rise in September and a larger customer base both adding to the increase.

Adjusted operating profit jumped 11pc to £316m. The adjusted figure excludes the effects of Sky’s ongoing efforts to buy Sky Italia and the majority of Sky Deutschland.

The cost of showing the golf tournament at Gleneagles helped to push Sky’s programming costs up 8.8pc on a year ago to £677m.

"The investments that we have made in new connected TV services are delivering growing benefits to our business,” said Jeremy Darroch, the chief executive of BskyB.

“We extended our lead as the UK's largest connected TV platform, surpassing 6 million connected homes. Sky Store more than doubled its revenues and our mobile TV service Sky Go Extra achieved a record quarter of growth. The benefits are clear as connected customers watch more TV, spend more with us and are more loyal.”

Sky's strong performance contrasts with disappointing growth figures from Netflix last night.