Sky is ending its TV news joint venture with Sky News Arabia in the United Arab Emirates and will give up all strategic and operational control of the 24-hour Arabic-language channel. The company will keep the Sky News Arabia name under a multi-year brand licensing deal, leaving IMI to take over the platform’s future.
The change lands now because it closes a major piece of Sky’s regional media footprint. Sky News Arabia, created in 2010 to challenge Arabic-language rivals such as Al Jazeera and the World Service’s News Arabic, began broadcasting across the Middle East and north Africa in 2012 and became one of the best-known pan-Arab news outlets in the market.
David Rhodes said Sky was proud of what had been built through the partnership with IMI and the regional presence that had grown around it. He said the time was right for the change and that the company looked forward to continuing the relationship in the next phase of Sky News Arabia. IMI said it would take full ownership of the platform’s future, with the focus and investment capacity to keep building what it called a leading multimedia news destination for the Arab world.
The ownership shift also comes after months of concern inside Sky about the editorial line the channel has taken in regional coverage. Sky News Arabia has faced criticism over its reporting on Sudan, where atrocities carried out by the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces have been accused of whitewashing genocide. In November, Sudan banned the channel from operating inside the country after a crew report from El Fasher said the security and humanitarian situation had stabilised. The reporter sent to the city was married to a senior official in the RSF’s parallel government, and the channel later published reports and online articles saying there was no evidence on the ground to support satellite imagery and testimony from survivors.
That dispute deepened in February, when a UN-mandated fact-finding mission concluded that the RSF and allied militias had deliberately targeted the destruction of ethnic minority communities during the siege, capture and 18-month occupation of El Fasher, with the hallmarks of genocide. The UAE has denied any responsibility for atrocities committed by the RSF. Sky is still keeping its brand on Sky News Arabia, even as it steps away from control, a sign that it wants to preserve the name while distancing itself from the editorial and political risk attached to the channel’s recent coverage.
The wider pattern is hard to miss. Comcast acquired Sky in 2018 and has since shown it is willing to let brand deals lapse when the fit changes; in Australia, a separate licensing agreement is ending and Sky News Australia is rebranding as News24 later this year. For Sky News Arabia, the unanswered issue is what the new multi-year licensing deal actually requires beyond the name, because IMI now holds the operational reins and the brand remains on the masthead.
