Sky News bets on Washington Post's Arc XP for video-first rebuild

Sky News will run its next-generation app and website on Arc XP, the media platform developed inside The Washington Post, under an expanded strategic agreement announced on 2 November 2026, with the new platforms targeted for launch by the end of 2027.

The deal is the technology backbone of 'Sky News 2030', a five-year transformation plan that aims to turn the Comcast-backed British broadcaster into a video-first news organisation built for digital distribution rather than linear television.

Sky News says the new app and website will carry more original reporting and give audiences more personalised ways to discover and follow stories. The publisher did not disclose financial terms of the agreement.

What does the partnership actually deliver?

Arc XP will supply its media platform, hosted on AWS, to underpin the new products. The engagement includes tooling for mobile apps, video and personalisation, and Sky News says the stack will give its product and technology teams greater flexibility to build new products faster than the current setup allows.

The agreement extends work the two companies have already done on Ask Sky News, an AI-powered conversational search experience that lets users query Sky's reporting directly. Monahan indicated that feature will carry into the new platforms.

Executive Chairman David Rhodes framed the deal in commercial as well as editorial terms. He said: "Today's partnership will give audiences even more reasons to come directly to Sky News for a best-in-class, video-first experience. It's a step change that will deliver more personalisation and better commercial outcomes—and deliver them by the end of next year."

Rhodes added: "We're so pleased to be on this journey together with the people at ArcXP and their partners across the news industry."

The audience problem Arc XP is selling against

Arc XP President Matt Monahan put the strategic rationale bluntly: publishers are losing direct contact with readers to intermediaries. "More people now find news through AI summaries and search results instead of going to the newsroom that did the reporting," he said. "Arc XP helps newsrooms win those audiences back, keep them, and grow revenue."

He continued: "With Sky News, we're building a video-led, personalised app and website that brings audiences straight to Sky's journalism, with Ask Sky News answering their questions from Sky's own reporting."

That argument lands at a moment when AI aggregators and search summaries are cutting referral traffic to publishers across the industry. Arc XP, commercially separated from The Washington Post's newsroom and now operated as a platform vendor serving publishers worldwide, positions direct-to-consumer apps and owned AI interfaces as the countermeasure.

The numbers behind the video-first bet

Sky News is not starting from zero on digital video. According to Ipsos data cited by the broadcaster, it has generated nearly 4.5 billion social video views in 2026 to date.

That figure covers social platforms, not owned properties, and it frames the strategic problem the Arc XP deal is meant to address: enormous reach on third-party channels, but comparatively limited capture of that audience on Sky's own apps and site, where subscription, advertising and data economics favour the publisher.

Context and timeline

The agreement deepens a relationship that already produced Ask Sky News. It also aligns Sky News with a wider cohort of publishers running their digital estates on Arc XP technology, which The Washington Post built for its own operations and now licenses internationally.

For Sky, the commitment is concrete on timing and vague on money. The new app and website are due by the end of 2027, inside the five-year Sky News 2030 window, with personalisation and improved commercial performance named as measurable goals by Rhodes.

Whether the rebuild converts billions of social views into direct, recurring audience on Sky-owned platforms is the question the 2027 launch will begin to answer.