Sky acquires Diagonal View
March 31, 2017
By Colin Mann
Sky is to acquire social content producer Diagonal View, known for its popular online channels, including Alltime10s and The Football Daily, as well as creating innovative campaigns for some of the world’s leading brands. The acquisition will broaden Sky’s engagement with a younger, digital-first audience, while also enabling Sky Media to offer greater brand-safe digital opportunities to advertisers.
With over one billion online views in the past year alone, the acquisition of Diagonal View will accelerate Sky’s online growth towards becoming a top five social destination for sport in all its territories and globally, building on its position as the number one destination for sport in the UK.
Diagonal View has a dedicated online audience of over 15 million subscribers, ranging across content as diverse as quantum physics to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air; military history to unexplained phenomena. Its main sports channel, The Football Daily, reaches hundreds of thousands of fans on a daily basis.
Sky Sports reached one in five of the UK and Ireland’s total digital population last year, amassing over 2 billion views globally through its existing online platforms. The most popular video on Soccer AM, Sky’s dedicated soccer YouTube channel, shows New York Giants’ Odell Beckham Jr revealing his ‘outrageous’ soccer skills – racking up 5.7 million views in just five months.
Diagonal View’s existing leadership team, including founder Matt Heiman, will continue to lead the business within the wider Sky Group.
“Last year, Sky Sports reached one in five of the UK and Ireland’s total digital population and this acquisition will further our ability to reach new social audiences,” commented Barney Francis, Managing Director of Sky Sports, said. “The breadth and diversity of sports that Sky has rights to, combined with Diagonal View’s track record in building audiences from scratch will be a powerful partnership; benefitting customers and advertisers alike. Matt has an excellent team at Diagonal View that will complement our existing team of creatives and producers here at Sky.”
“The Diagonal View team and I are excited to join forces with Sky,” declared Heiman. “Our social channels complement Sky’s current portfolio – the prospect of our incredibly popular Football Daily channels collaborating with Sky, whose pedigree in this space is unrivalled, is extremely exciting. Sky brings rights, expertise and scale. Diagonal View knows how to make content that digital natives enjoy watching and engaging with, so this partnership feels like a natural win-win for both us and Sky. We are looking forward to working together in developing innovative campaigns and building on the success of our popular owned channels.”