BSkyB will not renew its top sports rights franchises at any cost, chief executive Jeremy Darroch has told shareholders as the company brought its annual general meeting to Scotland for the first time.
The small turnout at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre helped chief executive Jeremy Darroch avoid all but a mild grilling over the challenge from BT to Sky's dominance of football broadcasting, which slashed 11% off Sky's market value last week, and there were no questions about his £7 million pay package.
But institutional shareholders did register a relatively strong protest with a 22.5% vote against the company's remuneration report.
Shareholder and advisory services including Pirc, ISS and Manifest had highlighted issues with the report, though the Association of British Insurers had given BSkyB its "blue top" seal of approval.
Questioned by retired shareholder John Kirkwood from Edinburgh on why Sky had raised prices but would in future be offering no Champions League football and no Heineken Cup rugby, Mr Darroch said: "We are trying to broaden sport out to offer more sport.
"We can't renew all rights all the time. Sometimes, like the Champions League, the price we are asked to pay is too much relative to the value we see."
BT Sport last week grabbed the TV rights for Champions League football from Sky and ITV in a blockbusting £900m deal, but Mr Darroch down played the issue, saying European football was "a very small part of our sports offering" amounting to only 3% of coverage.
He added: "We will go forward trying to add value. Sport buying is expensive - we have to monetise that and deliver a return to the business overhead. Sky Sports' revenues are in pretty good shape. We are far and away the best sports service in the UK."
Mr Kirkwood was one of only a handful of shareholders in the palatial surroundings of the EICC's new Atria venue,.
He was facing a 14-strong board, whose combined remuneration, excluding any of their share incentives exceeded £5.8 million last year.
Sky's non-executives include James Murdoch, safely re-elected to the board yesterday, Aberdeen Asset Management founder Martin Gilbert, and former Tesco finance director and banking consortium leader Andy Higginson.
Mr Gilbert, 58, who joined the board two years ago but is standing down as FirstGroup chairman, said afterwards he had enough time to spare for non-executive duties.
But he said that he had no intention of resting on his laurels following this week's transforming £550m deal to buy Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, and he added that he hoped more deals would follow this one.
Mr Gilbert said the enlarged group would now be a top 10 global player with $500 billion of assets in the US, enabling it to attract more attention from US investors.
"Half the world's wealth is in the US. Even the combined operations' AUM (assets under management) will be about 10% (of the group).Theoretically we should have 50%. Obviously it won't get to 50% but we would like to develop it more, we have the products for the US, it is an open market and they are investing more and more overseas."
But he said the rationale for the deal was also to grow Aberdeen's footprint in property, fixed income and alternatives.
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