Sky TV chief executive Sophie Moloney. Photo / Alex Burton
Sophie Moloney has come to lunch armed with her laptop and a set of headphones, and wearing what she describes as her lucky shoes. We’ll come to the footwear story shortly.
The Sky TV boss pulls the laptop from her bag and punches in a password to light up the screen. I clear away a menu and plate, don the headphones and settle in for a completely unexpected lunchtime video show.
‘Cause you’re a sky, ‘cause you’re a sky full of stars
I’m gonna give you my heart
‘Cause you’re a sky, ‘cause you’re a sky full of stars
‘Cause you light up the path
Coldplay’s Chris Martin blasts through my brain while a visual symphony sweeps across the laptop screen. It’s all action.
Sport! The Warriors! The All Blacks! Entertainment! Hollywood! News!
Moloney has been showcasing the video to staff at special internal meetings, promoting the company’s newly defined “purpose” – Share stories, Share possibilities, Share joy.
It’s a call to arms for the staff to understand why Sky is important in people’s lives and to help give them a sense of why they come to work each day.
And if that sounds like marketing mumbo-jumbo, think again.
It’s been a full-on period for Moloney, dealing with the rise and fall of competitor Spark Sport; grumpy shareholders over a failed bid to buy MediaWorks; and a less-than-stellar rollout of the new Sky Box.
And then, on Friday, Sky announced to the market that it had received a “highly confidential” offer from a mystery bidder to buy the company. Negotiations are only at an early stage but Sky has continued to pause its share buyback programme.
Moloney is now on the verge of an even more critical period for the business: renewed commercial strategies and a three-year investment plan; and, vitally, preparations for when Sky’s Golden Goose – the New Zealand Rugby (and All Blacks) rights – returns to the table for negotiation renewal.
It’s obviously critical to ensure the staff are fully and genuinely on board for the next phase of the company’s mission.
But Moloney has also been dealing with personal tragedy this year, which helped drive home to her the importance of Sky’s role in people’s lives.
Moloney’s adored brother, Simon Taylor, died in July aged just 51, after a long and hard-fought battle against a chronic illness caused by a meningioma tumour.
Her brother’s death is still raw.
“It’s definitely been super tough for Mum and Dad and grief packs a punch.
“The team has been really good. We don’t mind a few tears in the office, hey Chris?” says Moloney, to Sky’s chief corporate affairs officer Chris Major, sitting alongside her at lunch.
“He is no longer suffering after a long time and that’s the peace I keep coming back to.”
In Taylor’s final weeks at the Edmund Hillary Village Hospital in Auckland, Moloney connected a Sky Pod streaming device to the television set in his room, thinking her brother – a rugby fanatic – would be fixated on the Sky Sport channels.
But he also found the comedy series Schitt’s Creek through Netflix, one of the streaming services available through the Pod.
“Being the platform and him actually getting some joy and laughter at a time when he was incredibly incapacitated. It was just this lovely moment.”
Moloney marks her third anniversary as Sky’s chief executive in December. A lawyer by background, she joined Sky in 2018 as general counsel, before moving into the chief commercial officer role.
She was appointed to the top job in late 2020 when former chief executive Martin Stewart returned to the UK during Covid.
Aside from the pandemic, her time in the top seat has not been without challenges – the birth of Spark Sport in 2019, for example, led to Sky losing its domestic cricket, English Premier League football and Formula 1 motorsport rights. It has also had to battle hard to retain other sport.
But under Moloney, Sky snatched back the football and F1 and fended off Spark to renew its rights for NRL rugby league, including the Warriors. Moloney was personally involved in negotiating the new NRL deal.
Spark pulled the plug on its streaming service in July, after four years, although its flagship sport, cricket, has gone to TVNZ, so Sky is still without Black Caps domestic games and other local matches. (It does have rights to the current ICC Cricket World Cup).
Moloney also led the charge when Sky tried to buy MediaWorks in 2022. It didn’t go down well with investors.
“We got some really clear feedback from our shareholders,” says Moloney.
“They understood strategically but it wasn’t the right time for investments. That’s your owners giving you really good feedback.
“It’s not to say if there’s an opportunity in the future to grow and make it more compelling from a margin perspective, of course, you’re open to it. But just in terms of right now, it’s not on the agenda.”
Sky does see stronger commercial opportunities – for example, attracting more advertising to the likes of its recently rebranded free-to-air channel Sky Open (formerly Prime).
It has been surprisingly and relatively slow in this area over the decades but Moloney has brought on to her executive respected business leader and former journalist Lauren Quaintance as chief media and data officer. Quaintance, in turn, has made strong hires herself with the likes of Ben Gibb, formerly of oOh!media, appointed head of sales.
Part of Sky’s refreshed commercial strategy involves partnerships with other media, and not being afraid to share its content – including live sport and rugby – to attract and understand a bigger audience and therefore accrue more revenue. Not so long ago, Sky was taking an extremely aggressive legal approach if it thought its rivals were breaching copyright rules over its content.
Sky has dipped its toe in the water already, teaming up with Stuff, for example, for the Fifa Women’s World Cup and the current Rugby World Cup for a content- and revenue-share partnership.
Moloney also praises NZME, publisher of the Herald, and the data capability the company has built over the past five years, with insight into different audiences, and the way they are segmented and targeted.
“I definitely don’t want to sit here and say let’s go build everything ourselves when we could partner and create a beautiful win-win.”
Like the rest of media, Sky is facing challenging economic headwinds. In August, it announced its full-year profit had fallen 18 per cent to $51 million. Revenue rose 2 per cent to $754m.
Sky’s share price is barely shifting, generally bouncing anywhere between $2.30-$2.60 this year. It was sitting at $2.80 at market close on Friday, after a bump on the news of a possible new owner.
Moloney was pleased with the last round of engagement with her board and shareholders.
“I mean, they’re sitting there with the same question that we have. Why are we undervalued? The intrinsic value of the company has not been recognised in our market share price.”
Her executive team and the board are close. In May, they came together, pairing up for a high-level, corporate form of speed dating. One-to-one, they talked about challenges as an executive, and how directors might be able to help.
“I think as Joan [Withers, one of Sky’s directors] put it, she’s a loyally critical mentor. We’re actually in this together but obviously, the board has the governance responsibility to shareholders.”
Moloney lives in Tāhunanui, Nelson, with her husband William and three sons – a 17-year-old and 14-year-old twins.
She commutes for her role each week, generally flying to Auckland on a Sunday evening and trying to work from home in Nelson on a Friday although that hasn’t been happening quite as regularly of late.
Nelson offers her a complete break from Auckland, time with the family to refresh each week for a high-pressure media role.
She loves spending time walking the dog with her husband on the beach and is particularly looking forward to summer – “I adore the sunshine” – and the start of the cricket season, where all four men in her life play cricket.
“I love just cooking and providing at the weekend – just being a mum.”
Moloney met William at The Gathering music festival in Takaka in 1999. She was at the festival, showcasing her entrepreneurial skills having put her legal career on hold for a period – she had devised a water bottle carrier designed to make life easier for people attending concerts and other events. “I sold a few!”
The pair spent almost 20 years overseas, across UK and the UAE. Moloney has worked for Sky UK and Sky Arabia, and also branched into various other roles while she lived in Abu Dhabi.
It’s a long way from her early years in provincial New Zealand. She was raised in Wairarapa, where her dad was principal of Rathkeale College, and devoured a carefree upbringing that involved sport, splashing around in rivers, riding ponies, and general freedom as a self-described tomboy with the belief that girls could do anything.
A move to Auckland as a teenager, however, led to darker times. An outsider, not feeling that she fit in, and judged by the way she looked and dressed.
It was a defining period for Moloney and reinforced a critical principle for her as a leader – that people should not leave their personalities at the door when they come to work.
Sky, she says, is a “no-Zombie land”. Be yourself, let your personality shine through, lean into your specialist skill.
“I genuinely believe you shouldn’t come to work and leave your personality at the door. It’s super important you bring all of it because that’s the way we’re going to get the best out of you, right?”
She has been especially strong in driving female leadership at the company – its executive team is now 50-50 male-female – while also fully embracing te reo and diversity and inclusion principles.
Moloney has more skin in the game than most when it comes to the All Blacks’ Rugby World Cup quarter-final against Ireland this weekend.
A win guarantees two more live All Blacks matches for Sky (a semifinal and then either the final or the third/fourth place playoff).
But she’s also off to France next week to catch the semifinals and finals, and clearly wants to see the All Blacks in action.
Fast coming down the track is the renewal of Sky’s New Zealand Rugby rights. The broadcaster reportedly paid in the vicinity of $500m for a five-year deal starting in 2020.
The backdrop to the new negotiations includes the recent launch, by New Zealand Rugby, of its own digital channel, NZR+. While the channel does not feature live coverage of the likes of the All Blacks, it is a content and audience data play, with behind-the-scenes footage, exclusive interviews and bespoke shows.
While Sky has been, publicly, very relaxed about the move, any plans by New Zealand Rugby to have live coverage on NZR+ would without question affect the price Sky was willing to pay for its own rights.
“I absolutely understand the desire to connect with fans, particularly offshore,” says Moloney.
“Part of the Silver Lake investment [in New Zealand Rugby] is the ability to have really supercharged engagement with the All Blacks brand.”
She is hoping to see New Zealand Rugby’s commercial boss Craig Fenton while she’s in France. The rugby rights don’t expire until the end of 2025, but Moloney expects talks to officially start in 2024. She’s keen to start laying some groundwork.
“I think part of it is just understanding how those conversations are going to happen between the union and the commercial code.
“There’s always a premium for exclusivity and we will be going into a renewal understanding what our customers really enjoy and about what they’re watching. That’s the data that should dictate the value. Whereas in 2019 we were in a very different place.”
She expressly does not wish to, and won’t, start negotiations through the Herald.
But if NZR does want live content – co-exclusive content – then that will impact on the price.
“I think there’s a real opportunity to think about the market and all of the competitions and think about how we might partner up with New Zealand Rugby to get the best outcomes.
“From a broader thing around value, that’s obviously a confidential conversation between the two parties.”
Which brings us to the lucky shoes. She’s wearing them today – for special occasions, she laughs.
They’re white sneaker-style ankle-high shoes that she bought and wore in Queensland for the NRL Magic Round last year.
It was where she negotiated the renewed Sky deal for NRL rights.
“That was the deal that was on my mind from the first day of stepping into the role,” Moloney reveals.
Losing NRL to the likes of Spark would have been a massive body blow for Sky.
“At that stage in the competitive landscape, that was the key deal,” she says.
Sky brought to the table a loyal sports fanbase and multiple platforms beyond an app.
“We went through the board and, as we always do, we look at the viewership and we do a super-informed assessment. We just thought we were the right partners. We’ve got the sports viewers who are prepared and used to paying to watch the sport they really enjoy. They’re on the Sky platform.”
When the cricket comes up again, “we will do what we do. Understand the data and work out that opportunity. Or is there a different way to partner with New Zealand Cricket and TVNZ that enables the broadest audience possible?”
While TVNZ is back screening live sport, “not to be controversial, but I don’t see them as a big competitor”.
Reverting to her strategic position on partnerships, she thinks there are opportunities for Sky and TVNZ to partner up with different sports and events.
“Ultimately free-to-air does have a role to play with sports, particularly with different sports going through different cycles.”
Meanwhile, Moloney is confident the Sky Box rollout is coming back on track, after a series of issues around recording sport.
“Loving it!” exclaims Moloney, when I raise the issue of Sky Box bugs.
“There’s a significant improvement and significant uplift in our net promoter score for people on the box.”
She revealed in an interview for the weekly Media Insider column in August that she’d organised for two Sky staff members to sit with her parents, to work out exactly what some of the customer issues have been.
I suggest it was an assignment they couldn’t stuff up.
“They had a lovely time!” she says.
“I’m waiting for them to come back with the one-pager or the one or two pages that is basically the help guide.”
She says while technical issues around recording have been largely resolved, there are still people adjusting to the set-up and new remote.
“It is about the usability because it is very different, getting used to the remote.”
In her mum and dad’s case, the smart TV was not automatically turning on to the Sky interface.
If Moloney had her time again, she might not have rolled out the Sky Box to some of the company’s most loyal customers first. Some of them are in the older age bracket and, while a good percentage of them are tech savvy, others are used to working in a certain way.
“If I had my time again, would I go out to that cohort first, because I wanted to offer them a new experience? You might choose to test and learn with different cohorts instead.”
The reviews have not been kind – Sky was especially stung by commentary that described the box as a “dog” – but Moloney is confident those days are in the rear-vision mirror.
The Sky Pod, meanwhile, is on track to be rolled out to the wider customer base in time for Christmas.
Moloney is still striving to have TVNZ 1 and 2 on the pod, and says she’ll be talking to TVNZ acting CEO, Brent McAnulty, again to try to make progress.
Within the next three years, and as the company moves through more investment, it has set itself the target of doubling dividends for shareholders - to 30 cents a share by 2026.
For now, Moloney describes her role as a “super privilege”.
She’s excited about the path ahead, passionate about her customer-first mission, and keen to ensure the company has fun along the way.
“The one thing I hear from others … they say, ‘oh it’s lonely being chief executive’.
“I say rubbish, it’s not lonely. It is a little bit isolating because you don’t naturally get the same rapport that you had at peer level and there’s a responsibility and a perception that comes with the office.”
There’s an open-plan, hot-desk arrangement at Sky’s Viaduct Harbour headquarters in Auckland.
For a time, Moloney liked to sit in different areas, around the floor.
“I’d put my stuff down and come back and it would become a CEO/exclusion zone. I’m like ‘Where did everyone go?’”
Self-deprecating, funny. She’s brought her own personality to lunch today – the same principle she wants her team to embrace.
Is TradeMe about to be traded?; Top ad execs' new outdoor business; Big Stuff changes.