An Extensive SWOT Analysis of Sky – UK’s Largest TV Broadcaster

About Sky

Sky Limited is a broadcaster and telecommunication company that provides services like television and broadband Internet, fixed-line and mobile telephone services to consumers and many other services of businesses in the world. With millions of customers, It is the UK’s largest pay–TV broadcaster.

It was founded in 1988 and has turned into a pan-European TV giant with 12 million customers  (as of 2018)and networks in the UK, Ireland, Austria, Italy, etc. Sky rose to become Britain’s biggest digital subscription television company, it offers many channels like Sky Digibox, Sky+, Sky+ HD, Sky Q.

Its holding company British Sky Broadcasting Group plc changed its name from the old name to Sky plc. The UK subsidiary company’s name was changed from the British Sky Broadcasting Limited to Sky UK Limited, and continued to trade as “Sky”.

Products of Sky

Sky group has become one the market leader in the following sector:

• Direct broadband satellite
• Pay television
• Broadcasting
• Broadband
• Telephony

Competitors of Sky

There are numerous players in the telecommunication market, the top 5 competitors are as follows:

• Foxtel
• Dish
• DirecTV
• I-cable
• Bell Canada

Now that we have a clear understanding of the company and its competitors. Let’s deep dive into the SWOT Analysis of Sky.

SWOT Analysis of Sky

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool. With the help of this tool, managers can do a situational analysis of the company. It is an important and beneficial technique to evaluate the present strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats a company is facing in its current business environment. So let us understand it better by looking at the SWOT analysis of Sky.

1. Strengths of Sky

Strengths are known as capabilities or available resources that a company uses efficiently and effectively for its development and overall growth. Sky stands ahead of the competition because of the following strengths:

• Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the past years, Sky network has invested in building a strong brand portfolio, this brand portfolio is extremely useful for the Sky network for expansion into new product varieties.

• Highly Skilled Workforce – The company provides training and learning programs to its employees. It is investing a large number of resources in the training and development of its employees which results in a workforce that is highly skilled and motivated to achieve more.
• Superb Performance in New Markets – This company has built expertise in new markets and they are making them successful. The expansion has helped this company to build many new revenue streams and diversify the economic cycle risk in the markets in which it operates.
• Strong Distribution Network – Over the last few years, Sky Network has built a reliable and useful distribution network that can reach the majority of its potential market and customers.

2. Weakness of Sky

Weaknesses in the SWOT analysis of a company are referred to as those factors that affect the growth of the company and thwart the company’s process from achieving its goals. Let’s take a look at the weaknesses of Sky-

• Forecasting – Sky company is not good at product demand forecasting and it also leads to a higher rate of missed opportunities which is very high as compared to its competitors.  
• Limited success outside core business – Even though Sky network is one of the leading organizations in the telecommunication sector it has faced many challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
• Lack of choice – There are gaps in the product range sold by the sky network. This lack of choice can give benefits to competitors with dominion in the market and products.
• Competition – The company hasn’t been able to deal with the challenges presented by the new entrants and companies in the segment and has lost a small market share in the product categories of Sky Network.
• Marketing – The marketing of the products left a lot to be desired that is very low. Even though the product is a success in terms of sales, its positioning is not clearly defined which leads to attacks in this telecommunication segment from the competitors.

3. Opportunities of Sky

Opportunity is an external factor that helps a company to get a competitive advantage by using expected market trends. Some of the game-changer opportunities for Sky are listed below:

• Dilution of Competitors – The development of the market will lead to the dilution of competitors’ advantages and enable Sky Network to increase its competitiveness compared to the other competitors.
• Cost of transportation – the cost of transportation is decreasing because of lower shipping prices which can also bring down the cost of Sky services thus providing an opportunity to the company to boost its profitability or pass on the benefits to the customers to gain market share.
• Opening up of new markets – The adoption of new technology and techniques standards and government free trade agreement has provided Sky network with the opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
• New trends – New trends in the market can open up new opportunities for the Sky network. It provides a larger way for the organization to build new revenue streams and spread them into new product categories too.

4. Threats of Sky

Threats are the external factors that can cause harm and hinder the development of the company. These factors should be addressed as soon as possible to avoid any major damage or harm to the organization. The threats to the Sky are:

• Intense competition – Stable profitability and revenues have increased amongst the number of players in the industry of telecommunication over the last two years which has put downward pressure on not only profitability and revenues but also on overall sales.
• Shortage of skilled workforce – Shortage of skilled and advanced workforce in certain global markets represents a threat to steady growth of profits and revenues for Sky Network Television Limited in those markets.
• Currency fluctuations – As the company is operating among various countries it is exposed to currency fluctuations especially given the volatile political climate in several markets across the globe.
• Increasing trend toward isolationism – The increasing trend toward isolationism in the American and other country’s economy can lead to similar reactions from other governments thus negatively impacting international sales and profits.
• Lawsuits – Different laws and continuous fluctuations in them regarding product standards in those markets. Creating a threat to the sky network.

So that was the SWOT Analysis of Sky. It is a very beneficial tool for big companies like Sky to analyze their risk and advantages to further plan the working of the company. It helps in clearly identifying and understanding the present position of the company to make future strategies.

Conclusion

From the SWOT analysis of Sky, we can conclude that the company has always created a benchmark to its business & performance as compared to the other competitors in the industry. The Sky Network can improve on its strategic planning and positioning. They can surely empathize more with their employee’s training. This company is developing day by day and its growth is also continuing to rise. It is the largest broadband company in the world.

Sky surely has a lot of scope to improve its marketing strategies – one such avenue for them is to adopt digital marketing. This rapidly growing field of marketing is the future and is a very beneficial promotional tool for all kinds of companies. Learning digital marketing and getting certified in it can open up a lot of opportunities for you. If marketing is something that interests you, you should definitely check out the Post Graduation Programme in Digital Marketing offered by IIDE that will help you transform into the managerial candidate in the marketing department of companies.

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