Premiere (pay television network)

Sky Deutschland AG

Type	Aktiengesellschaft
Industry	Mass media
Founded	28 February 1991; 26 years ago (1991-02-28)
Headquarters	Unterföhring, Germany
Area served	Germany, Austria
Key people	Carsten Schmidt (CEO) James Murdoch (Chairman of the supervisory board)
Services	Pay TV Broadcasting Television Production
Revenue	€977.8 million (2010)
Operating income	€367.6 million (2010)
Profit	€407.5 million (2010)
Total assets	€1.036 billion (2010)
Total equity	€333.8 million (2010)
Number of employees	1,420 (FTE, 2010)
Parent	Sky plc
Website	www.sky.de

Sky Deutschland AG, branded as Sky, is a German media company which operates a Direct Broadcast Satellite Pay TV platform in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (through Teleclub) offering a collection of basic and premium digital subscription television channels of different categories via satellite and cable television.

It was launched in 1991 as Premiere. The channel originally started as a single analogue channel on the Astra 1A satellite, showing films dubbed into German, as well as in original audio, live football matches from the German Bundesliga and Austrian Bundesliga (and at one time the UEFA Cup), and documentaries and TV series. After the coming of the digital age, the service has since consisted of many channels with many new ones added over the years. On 4 July 2009, the service and its channels were rebranded as "Sky".

Sky Deutschland is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sky plc. The programming service itself is provided by its subsidiary Sky Deutschland Fernsehen GmbH & Co. KG (formerly Premiere Fernsehen GmbH & Co. KG). It topped 3,000,000 subscribers by the end of 2011. As of Q2 2014, Sky Deutschland has more than 4 million subscribers.

The German Sky has its origin in the analogue premium channel "Premiere". It was owned by Kirch Group, Bertelsmann, and Canal+, and started broadcasting in 1991.