After a 14-year collaborative partnership, UK-headquartered Sky has formally exited its co-ownership of pan-regional Arabic-language broadcaster Sky News Arabia, ceding all strategic and operational control to its United Arab Emirates-based co-founder International Media Investments (IMI). The transition, announced Sunday, includes a multi-year brand licensing arrangement that will allow the broadcaster to retain its existing Sky-branded identity going forward.
The original partnership between Sky and IMI dates back to 2010, when the two entities laid the groundwork for a new 24-hour Arabic news outlet designed to challenge established regional players across the Middle East and North Africa. Sky News Arabia launched its official broadcast in 2012, entering a competitive landscape long dominated by Doha-based Al Jazeera and Saudi-owned Al Arabiya. No financial details of the full ownership transfer deal have been made public.
In an official statement marking the transition, David Rhodes, Executive Chairman of Sky News Group, framed the handover as a natural next step for the broadcaster. “The time is right for this change and we look forward to continuing our relationship in the next phase of Sky News Arabia,” Rhodes said, adding that the group was proud of the platform built through its collaboration with IMI and viewed the ownership shift as a natural progression for the outlet’s development.
IMI, a major Abu Dhabi-based media investment firm controlled by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Vice President and owner of the Manchester City Football Club, echoed this framing in its own comments. The company emphasized that the full ownership transfer reflects how Sky News Arabia has grown into a fully mature regional media institution, and that sole control will position the outlet to pursue accelerated expansion and innovative editorial development.
However, the ownership restructuring comes on the heels of significant public scrutiny over Sky News Arabia’s editorial coverage of the ongoing civil conflict in Sudan. In November last year, former senior Sky executives based in the UK told The Daily Telegraph that the outlet had devolved into a mouthpiece for UAE leadership, failing to provide accurate, independent reporting on atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a Sudanese paramilitary group that UN-appointed international investigators have found targeted ethnic minority communities in Darfur.
While the UAE government has repeatedly denied allegations of backing the RSF, independent outlet Middle East Eye has published extensive on-the-record reporting documenting the UAE’s support, citing a wide range of evidence including satellite imagery, flight logs, weapons serial numbers and multiple anonymous and named sources inside the region. In the same November that the original allegations emerged, Sudan’s transitional government formally banned Sky News Arabia from operating within the country’s borders, after the outlet published a report from El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, that claimed security conditions in the conflict-torn city were stabilizing.
The Guardian later reported that top executives at Sky’s UK headquarters had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the outlet’s editorial choices, particularly around how it framed the Sudan conflict. The newspaper also noted that Sky News Arabia had published multiple pieces questioning the credibility of evidence collected by international investigators and conflict survivors documenting RSF atrocities.
In February of this year, a UN-mandated independent fact-finding mission concluded that actions carried out by the RSF and its allied militias across parts of Sudan carry the clear “hallmarks of genocide.” Shortly after this UN report was released, Sky News Arabia deployed veteran correspondent Tsabih Mubarak Khatir to cover El Fasher – a move that drew widespread criticism after it was revealed Khatir is married to a senior RSF official. Video footage from the trip later showed Khatir embracing a high-profile female RSF commander who had previously publicly called on RSF fighters to rape Darfuri women, telling the commander, “we are with you.”
A month later, a major joint investigation by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab and NASA’s Harvest programme confirmed that the RSF has carried out a deliberate campaign of mass starvation against civilian populations in El Fasher, destroying dozens of farming villages and wiping out nearly all crop production in the area surrounding the besieged city.
IMI has repeatedly maintained that its ownership negotiations with Sky were rooted in purely commercial considerations, and were unrelated to any disputes over editorial policy. When contacted by Bloomberg News for additional comment following Sunday’s announcement, an IMI spokesperson declined to provide any statement beyond the company’s official release, while Sky did not immediately respond to requests for comment.