Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings has made the surprising admission that he believes arch-rival BSkyB should not have its movie channels regulated by the UK competition authorities.

Hastings said that he was looking for a “fair fight” with Sky over content rights but that immediate regulatory intervention was not right. “Sky is a fearsome competitor, they have all six major studios in deals,” he told The Guardian. “Right now there probably isn’t a pressing need for government intervention but if we don’t have one (of Sky’s big studio deals) in a year or so….”

Last summer the Competition Commission provisionally concluded that Sky’s deals with studios were anti-competitive and needed to be restricted to allow rivals to flourish. However, earlier this month the investigation was widened to see if the arrival of Netflix, and expansion of Amazon-owned LOVEFiLM, might have changed the market.

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