So what would Sky generate per year for a 100% owner?
Here's a basic analysis for both Disney and Comcast:
Disney is paying about $50 billion ($36 billion stock and $14 billion in debt) after subtracting out $20 billion in RSNs and $15 billion in Sky stake being sold off.
Disney is receiving units (FX/National Geographic/Fox Television+Movie studio/Fox International Channels/Star India) that generate about $13 billion in revenue and $3 billion in EBITDA as well as the 30% of Hulu for that roughly $50 billion in stock and debt.
Fox will keep about $10 billion in revenue and $2.5 billion in EBITDA.
The RSNs which generate about $7 billion in revenue and $2 billion in EBITDA are going to be sold off.
Comcast is paying about $49 billion ($38.8 billion in stock and $10.3 billion in debt) and receiving Sky that generates $17.8 billion in revenue and $3.1 billion in EBITDA.
Sky is 3 units though, and by virtue of British laws (basically forced BT monopoly to allow others to use their connections) that have allowed them to build a large broadband business (6+ million subscribers), Sky UK is the healthiest of its 3 units:
Sky UK: $11.7 billion revenue with $2.5 billion in EBITDA
(21% profitability ratio)
Sky Germany/Austria: $2.6 billion revenue with $160 million in EBITDA
(6% profitability ratio)
Sky Italy: $3.4 billion revenue with $450 million in EBITDA
(13% profitability ratio)
As you can see, Sky UK is very healthy because it's a unified Comcast-like business that can rely on broadband to secure its content businesses. The Italian business is pretty healthy as well. The German/Austrian business is not healthy at all.
This is why my expectations are that Comcast will begin to look hard at purchasing cable units in Germany/Austria and Italy with which to create a more unified content + broadband offering similar to what Sky UK has.
Sky has also gone into Spain/Switzerland with OTT and could possibly look at other countries like Portugal as well in the future.
What company also has cable units in most of those countries? Vodafone: Vodafone owns massive numbers of cable units in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
If there is to be a deal to build a European Comcast (like how Comcast bought AT&T Broadband back in 1999-2000), then Comcast will have to make a deal with Vodafone at some point. Those German/Italian operations will need a broadband offering to secure Sky's content offering.