Warner Bros. Discovery U.K. boss Andrew Georgiou said the Olympucs had been “great” for the media company.
Georgiou was speaking at the tail-end of a phenomenally successful summer in Europe for WBD, which had the exclusive pay TV rights to the Olympic Games across most of Europe. “We had more subscribers come on after Day 4 [of the Olympics] than we had in the entire Tokyo games,” he said. “On linear we outstripped our growth…so for us it’s done a fantastic job across all of the markets. The challenge of course is keeping the customers.”
Georgiou, who is the president and managing director of WBD in U.K. and Ireland and of the company’s European sports division, was speaking on a panel titled “How to win audiences and influence them” on Tuesday morning at the Royal Television Society conference in London.
His fellow panellists included Sky Studios CEO and chief content officer Cécile Frot-Coutaz, Walt Disney EMEA’s senior VP for strategy and business development Nami Patel and Sarah Rose, president of Channel 5 and Paramount‘s U.K. regional lead. The panel was moderated by Financial Times journalist John Gapper.
“What live [TV] does is give people a reason to engage at the same time,” Georgiou added of the worldwide athletics championship. “It focus a global population on a single event.”
He also confirmed that WBD streamer Max is set to launch in the U.K. in 2026 although whether it’s in partnership with Sky — with whom WBD has a long-running exclusive content deal that has seen prestige HBO shows including “House of the Dragon” and “Succession” bow in the U.K. exclusively on Sky platforms — is unclear, with Georgiou saying the two media giants haven’t yet reached a deal. Max is already available across most of Europe. Frot-Coutaz added that from Sky’s perspective the partnership deal with WBD had been successful and they have “hope” they’ll find a way to work together in the future.
The situation generally at Comcast-owned Sky has been less rosy overall, with a number of corporate reshuffles over the past year, which saw Frot-Coutaz expand her role to include content and the departure of longterm sky exec Zai Bennett to BBC Studios not long after.
Frot-Coutaz admitted that the company, which is both a content creator and broadcaster, is — like other media companies — competing against a range of external factors from social media to video games for viewers’ time and attention. “The world is fragmenting, there’s obv no question about that,” she said.
“As a creator and a curator you have to think slightly differently about what you commission and what you acquire.”
Paramount is experiencing its own era of uncertainty, particularly in the U.K., as its merger with Skydance Media looms. The union is particularly concerning to U.K. broadcaster Channel 5, which may find itself surplus to requirements. “It may disappoint you but it’s a huge relief to me that I can’t talk about the transaction,” Rose said of the merger. “From a U.K. perspective within an American organization, they have recognised the value of what we’re creating and they continue to invest in us and always have done.”
Other speaks at the RTS conference this year, which is sponsored by Netflix, include Ted Sarandos, soccer star David Beckham and U.K. PSB heads Tim Davie, Carolyn McCall and Alex Mahon.