Laudatio von Christian Illek auf dem HORIZONT Award 2013

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. As Brian took over his new job at Sky, many people thought, 'Okay, just another CEO of Sky. Let's wait and see how long he's going to stay with that company.' The two predecessors made it in between 12 to 18 months, and the starting position was everything but easy. He had about two and a half million customers, and the company actually generated a loss of more than a quarter of a billion euros with less than a billion euros of revenues. But it turned out to be that Brian is different, and he's different for various reasons. First, he had a big idea, and I mean a really big idea. Secondly, he had two attributes which served him well over his career. One was he's passionate about what he's doing, and secondly he's really tenacious. So what was and still is his big idea? In one of the very first interviews he gave in Germany, he said, 'Germany deserves better TV, full stop. And by the way, pay TV is not a niche product. And my ambition is I want to reach every German household here in Germany with my pay TV service.' Brian, I don't know whether you were aware that we have about 40 million households at this time. Even with your three and a half million customers you have today, there's still a way to go, so we expect you to be in Germany here for quite some time. But what about Brian's passion? I would describe the passion of Brian at least along three main directions. He's passionate about content, he's really passionate about technology, but he's even more passionate about customers. Regarding content, Brian and his team were pretty clear that the core of Sky's value proposition is live sports, and within that category, obviously soccer. So therefore he secured the live Bundesliga broadcasting and subscription rights until 2017, and he did the same for Champions League. But not everything is around sports. He introduced us to blockbuster series such as Game of Thrones, The Newsroom, or Boardwalk Empire right before they hit the market in the US and brought it to Germany. He invented Germany's first 24-hour sports live channel, which is Sky Sport News, and that project was highly questioned in the market, but it had to overcome a threshold also within the company. He simply didn't have enough space to realize the project. So what did he do? He took the space away from his board of directors. He stole three meeting rooms from them, and as he finalized the project he said to his team, 'Now we have a brand new studio, and by the way, less board meetings.' Under Brian's leadership, Sky really developed itself to a front runner of innovation. He pushed HD, he introduced 3D with Bundesliga to the German market, and now he's pioneering Ultra HD. He introduced Sky Anytime, an innovative personal video recorder. He brought Sky Go to the market, which basically provides content on almost any device. Right before Christmas last year, he introduced Snap, an online video store which has a bunch of HD content. And last week he introduced Sky Home, a service which allows you to personalize your start screen. So very much along the lines of technology, but all the content and technology is only a means to an end if it serves the most important stakeholder, which is the customer. And to be passionate about customers, he learned in his very early days. He learned it at the Philadelphia Phillies, which is a professional baseball team in Philadelphia, the city he grew up. His father served as a marketing manager at the team and he supported him, but initially selling hot dogs and programs. But as his career advanced, he became a mascot. He put on a green hairy costume, did dances and blew balloons. During that period, he himself said he learned a very important marketing message: if you want to be successful, you have to fight for the attention of your customer, of your audience, every day, every minute, every second. And Brian is really someone who's really passionate about customers. And what's he also? He's tenacious. As he came to the German market, he made it clear to everyone that to develop a pay TV market in the German environment will require time. It's a marathon, it's not a sprint. He said a pay TV provider develops a relationship with its customer by us. One of his most prominent pieces of furniture, the television, so you better make sure that you do a lot of right steps in the right direction. And this is why they call him Mr. or Inspector Gadget. For somebody who's not familiar with that character, it's actually a comic character who's wearing a trench coat and he can transform his fingers into variable tools to fix problems and issues. And that's what Brian is all about: fixing problems and issues. And I think he's shown some tremendous results. Under his leadership, Sky increased the number of customers by 40%, he reduced the churn by 50%, he increased the average revenue per customer by 20%. He turned the company from a negative EBITDA of several hundred millions to a positive territory. I know that you're shooting for a cash flow break-even, and under his leadership the share price increased from 80 cents to almost 8. I would say that is quite an amazing result, or should I say milestone. Finally, on a personal note, I in my former role experienced you really as a tough competitor. I lost the Bundesliga auction against you, which was quite a defeat to me. But although we were or have been fierce competitors, I think I would describe our relationship always as being respectful, friendly, and fair. I want to thank you for this, and I know that you're trying to keep your personality and your person itself very low-key, but at least for tonight, time's up. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the winner in the category media. And before we roll the video, please a big hand of applause.