The race between Manchester City and Arsenal for the 2024 Premier League title helped Sky Ireland's business to achieve revenues of £504m (€578.46m) last year.
New accounts filed with Companies House in the UK for SKY Subscribers Services Ltd reveal the Irish branch revenues last year totalled £504m - which was £6m down on the 2023 revenues of £510m.
However, the revenue drop is wholly attributable to foreign exchange fluctuations between sterling and the euro during 2024 as Sky Ireland conducts its business in euros and Sky Ireland's euro revenues actually increased during 2024 by 1.14% before the foreign exchange differences are taken into account.
A note attached to the accounts states that the Irish revenues comprise 'direct to home' pay television, broadband and telephony services here.
The stable revenues at Sky Ireland for 2024 come against a background of the company’s efforts to clamp down on so-called TV 'dodgy boxes’ which are used to illegally stream content such as sports and movies.
Revenues at the Sky Ireland operation were boosted in 2024 with the company launching its Sky mobile phone service and it had 13,000 customers by the end of the year.
ComReg figures also show that Sky Ireland’s broadband customer base increased by 10,000 to 264,000 during 2024.
The revenues also comprise of SKY Ireland advertising revenue here in Ireland where the UK Premier League is the SKY's marquee product and December 2023, the Premier League agreed a new deal with Sky and TNT Sports in which the competition will receive £6.7 billion over four years for its UK television rights.
Overall revenues at Sky Subscribers Services Ltd in 2024 dipped marginally from £1.03 billion to £1.01 billion as operating profits decreased by 9% from £78m to £71m.
However, a jump in investment income from £23m to £42m offset by finance costs of £3m contributed to pre-tax profits increasing by 11% from £99m to £110m.
The company recorded post tax profits of £96m after taking into account a corporation tax charge of £14m.
The accounts include a cost of £133m for programming and a note states that "within programming expenses we have included Direct Network costs associated with the Irish branch of £76m".
SKY employs just under 1,000 people in Ireland, across a range of functions including sales, marketing, finance, retail, support and customer service.
Numbers employed across Sky Subscribers reduced from 8,963 to 8,164 last year as staff costs declined from £335m to £320m.
The scale of the SKY Ireland business here on revenues of €578m in 2024 is underlined when separate figures show that income from the Government's €160 TV licence here generated €195m in 2024.
The accounts state that a decision to shut down three SKY contact centres this year in England is expected to cost in the range of £30m to £35m.
Reporting by Gordon Deegan
