MSNBC has struck a multi-year agreement with Sky News that will expand its access to international reporting across all platforms, the networks announced on Wednesday.
Under the deal, MSNBC will have access to the vast global resources of Sky News, including reporters at its main studio in London and bureaus in Beijing, Jerusalem, Johannesburg and Moscow. Sky News employs 500 journalists around the world.
Through its common ownership, MSNBC has occasionally aired Sky News reports in the past. It has also replaced its overnight news rebroadcasts with simulcasts of Sky News during major global breaking news events. MSNBC and Sky News are currently owned by Comcast.
The partnership starts October 1, less than a week after MSNBC is set to lose the resources of NBC News as part of a planned spin-out from Comcast. NBC News and Sky News will continue to share common ownership when the spin-out is completed; MSNBC will be owned by a new company, called Versant, and is slated to change its name to MS NOW.
“In this moment of consequential and historic news events happening around the world, we are honored to bring Sky News’ premium, on-the-ground reporting and roster of top journalists to the MSNBC community,” Rebecca Kutler, the President of MSNBC, said in a statement. “This partnership marks a new chapter for us at MSNBC and emphasizes a key element of the network’s new brand promise as MS NOW, My Source for News, Opinion, and the World.”
“This partnership with Versant will put that eyewitness reporting in front of even greater audiences in the U.S. and around the world,” David Rhodes, the Executive Chairman of Sky News Group, said on Wednesday. “We’re delighted to get to work with their creative and entrepreneurial team.”
While MSNBC is mainly available on traditional and streaming pay TV platforms, Sky News has offered a free web stream of its global news channel in the United States for more than a decade. It wasn’t clear from the announcement on Wednesday if Sky News will continue to offer its free web stream in the United States after next month. (The global feed offers the same programming as Sky News’ domestic channel, but with localized advertisements, promotional interstitials and weather reports.)
MSNBC and Sky News were previously involved in a global news partnership, one that included NBC News, called NBC Sky World News. The channel was set to launch with the resources of all three news brands in 2020, but was put on indefinite hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The agreement comes as Sky News pursues a five-year transformation plan, known as Sky News 2030, which aims to evolve its newsroom into a premium, video-first digital operation supported by multiple revenue streams beyond advertising.
MSNBC continues to position itself as both a breaking news source and opinion hub, averaging 1.2 million primetime viewers this year, according to Nielsen ratings released by the network. Viewers spend more than eight hours per week with the network, which has also built significant reach online, with more than 6.2 billion combined views across TikTok and YouTube in 2025, MSNBC said.
