British Sky Broadcasting has made what appears to be a knock-out bid for a package of seven digital television channels owned by Virgin Media, offering about 60 per cent higher than its nearest challenger, people involved in the auction said on Thursday.

None of the other bidders with offers on the table, including Channel 4, Time Warner, RTL and NBC Universal, have bid much more than £100m – a level well short of the £160m approach from BSkyB.