Refining Sky’s winning strategy
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t is just over two years since Comcast bought Sky for a massive £30.6bn, but it is only now that the company has appointed one of its own senior executives to run the European pay-TV giant. Last month, the dynamic Dana Strong, head of Comcast Cable’s consumer services business, was announced as the successor to Jeremy Darroch, who led Sky for 13 years and was chief financial officer before that. Strong’s appointment represents the end of an era for Sky and comes as the TV business is being challenged by the rise of direct-to-consumer streaming services led by Netflix, Amazon and Disney. While Sky’s brand and business remain strong, the impact of the pandemic, as live sports were cancelled and advertising fell, led to a 22.5% drop in earnings for the nine months to 30 September. Some observers argue that a pivot is needed to ensure Sky’s future growth and market relevance. For the past three years, Strong has been running Comcast’s consumer
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cable business in the US. There, she launched several new products and reset the strategy of the consumer cable unit to focus on changing consumer needs. Strong, who has two teenage children and a husband who is an art history PhD student at Columbia, rebranded the Comcast broadband product to Xfinity and added wi-fi boosters and parental controls as part of the package. “Dana knew that focusing on just speed and price wasn’t going to move the needle,” says a US colleague. Strong’s ability to lean into product segmentation comes from both her pedigree as an engineer and her 20 years’ experience of working outside the US, in both Australia and Europe; she was COO for Virgin Media, and chief transformation officer at Liberty Global as well as CEO of Liberty’s Irish cable TV operator, UPC Ireland. “She really knows how to navigate the upper echelons of corporate environments very effectively and how to bring out the best in people who work for her,” observed Claire Enders, who runs Enders Analysis. “That inspires
Comcast
Sky’s new CEO, Dana Strong, is a dynamic former engineer who knows how to stand out in a room, says Kate Bulkley both great loyalty in them and good results for the company.” Although a native of the US – Strong was born in Ohio – most of her career has been spent outside of the US. She met her husband, Mark, when they were both studying in Philadelphia. A colleague notes that Strong jokes that she first left the US so long ago that Bill Clinton was still President. Strong will report directly to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, who poached her from Virgin Media in 2018 following reports that she was a rising star. A recruitment dinner in Philadelphia followed, when they discussed Comcast’s family-oriented culture and she decided to accept his job offer. Three years later, Roberts recognises there are big changes afoot in the cable business and figures that Strong has the right credentials to tackle them. Even so, Craig Moffett of media analyst MoffettNathanson believes that the business case for Comcast’s decision to buy Sky is still unclear. He argues that a more “platform-agnostic business model” is required to counteract the trends of cord cutting and companies
