I have Sky Fibre and the Variety Bundle. To upgrade to Sky Sports is £22p/m however with this offer it will only work out at £12p/m. Considering I was thinking of upgrading to Sky Sports for the new season anyway this was a no brainer...
So in a year's time effectively a whole new channel for just Eredivisie and La Liga?
The Dutch league is borderline. Spanish, German, Italian, French are the big Euro Leagues that matter. BT also have the other main ones from Brazil, the USA and Australia because they fill otherwise barren hours of programming. I'm not sure what else Sky could add to make this worthwhile.
We don't know if they have got La Liga after next season (current deal ends 2014/15). Do they know they have got it or not? I'm sure they would be singing it from the rooftops by now if they had - as they did with other extensions/renewals. Conclusion: they have it for one year for sure thereafter unknown.
Surely this is even more of an incentive for BT to outbid Sky for La Liga? That would be something of a champagne moment. Having your established rival in this business deciding to call a new channel "your new home for European Football" for its customers, implying domestic as well as international coverage, and the club games on it being a couple per week from the Eredivisie and possibly a handful each Spring from the Coppa Italia - wouldn't that look farcical? Unless this in a way is Sky running some rights down (CL/La Liga?) in those rights last years and the Eredivisie is a weaker patchover to make up slightly the number of games lost to BT in the years ahead (something like the Top14/Pro12 deals as make-up for AP and European rugby losses?). Having said that currently as a subscriber to both I would apparently be in for even more viewing choices next year so welcome it!
I think some considered last year as something of a golden year in football coverage. Well next season we will seemingly have even more games on with a 5th European league added in to the schedules.
So in a year's time effectively a whole new channel for just Eredivisie and La Liga?
The Dutch league is borderline. Spanish, German, Italian, French are the big Euro Leagues that matter. BT also have the other main ones from Brazil, the USA and Australia because they fill otherwise barren hours of programming. I'm not sure what else Sky could add to make this worthwhile.
Yes Sky have La Liga next season but it looks far from certain that they have it after next season otherwise im sure they would of taken great delight in mentioning something along the lines of an increase in coverage.
So after next season they lose Champion's League and possibly La Liga so apart from the Dutch League they can really forget about all the other major European Leagues unless they are looking at maybe the Russian and Portuguese League, how many would really be interested in anything outside the main 4?.
At the end of the day I think this channel is going to end up only with main European Friendlies and off course qualifiers all of which could of been put on any of it's other main 4 channels.
We don't know if they have got La Liga after next season (current deal ends 2014/15). Do they know they have got it or not? I'm sure they would be singing it from the rooftops by now if they had - as they did with other extensions/renewals. Conclusion: they have it for one year for sure thereafter unknown.
Surely this is even more of an incentive for BT to outbid Sky for La Liga? That would be something of a champagne moment. Having your established rival in this business deciding to call a new channel "your new home for European Football" for its customers, implying domestic as well as international coverage, and the club games on it being a couple per week from the Eredivisie and possibly a handful each Spring from the Coppa Italia - wouldn't that look farcical? Unless this in a way is Sky running some rights down (CL/La Liga?) in those rights last years and the Eredivisie is a weaker patchover to make up slightly the number of games lost to BT in the years ahead (something like the Top14/Pro12 deals as make-up for AP and European rugby losses?). Having said that currently as a subscriber to both I would apparently be in for even more viewing choices next year so welcome it!
I think some considered last year as something of a golden year in football coverage. Well next season we will seemingly have even more games on with a 5th European league added in to the schedules.
I think this is the key point in the discussion around SS5, whether Sky Sports have/can maintain the La Liga rights. If BT manages a deal to secure those rights too, then there goes two of the three main 'tentpole' properties for the channel after it's first season...
I just called Sky and asked if this Free 2 year Broadband offer was available to both existing and new customers and was told yes, definitely for both.
Just got to register for SS5 on Thursday and 2 years of free Broadband will follow :-)
Smart in the sense that locking people into 2 years of broadband will negate a small part of BT offering a crazy deal around there CL rights next year. The "home of European Football" sounds a bit naff to me though when the rights aren't all that. Seems a bit rushed and would have hoped for better.
At the end of the day I think this channel is going to end up only with main European Friendlies and off course qualifiers all of which could of been put on any of it's other main 4 channels.
I think this is the key point in the discussion around SS5, whether Sky Sports have/can maintain the La Liga rights. If BT manages a deal to secure those rights too, then there goes two of the three main 'tentpole' properties for the channel after it's first season...
Sky's European football rights look weaker than those held by BT and without La Liga are drastically weaker. So Sky could still persist in calling it "your home for European football" after a year, I suppose, technically it could still be home for Sky's European football, but calling it that seems tenuous even from the get-go. (in fact going forward calling it "tenuous" might seem like an understatement - "a mistake" might be more accurate and "farcical", heading forward, or is that stretching it?). Depends on La Liga but who would have thought a couple of years ago of thinking that a Sky branding of a channel would depend on La Liga!
To people not paying attention to rights deals but happily following football could it not look like, amongst other things, Sky were about to take a run at BT's Euro leagues (which as far as info is available are out of reach for years)? I mean, Sky can't even show goals/highlights from the leagues to which BT have total exclusivity.
Smart in the sense that locking people into 2 years of broadband will negate a small part of BT offering a crazy deal around there CL rights next year. The "home of European Football" sounds a bit naff to me though when the rights aren't all that. Seems a bit rushed and would have hoped for better.
This could be viewed as Sky's last throw of the dice with their CL rights (and possibly La Liga) - to milk an extra year of bb with a 2 yr commitment from some who may not fully comprehend/remember what's around the corner re CL (and possibly La Liga)?
I'm in a BT contract, so won't be switching Internet wise. I have Sky Sports, so do we need to register just for SS5 or will that automatically appear as we are Sky Sports subscribers anyway, but don't want broadband off them.?
I think all this amounts to really is a short-term marketing gimmick.
In year 1, the channel will have a strong content line-up - CL, La Liga, Eredivisie and Euro qualifiers. That is easily a strong enough line-up for the channel to appear credible to the average subscriber.
Of course we know that Sky has lost CL from the following year and could lose La Liga. But whilst it's pretty widely known that BT has won the CL, the average subscriber won't be familiar with the expiry date for La Liga rights.
Some people may well falsely interpret the channel as an indicator that Sky may be planning to obtain additional European football in future seasons.
I suspect that SS customers will receive the channel even if they don't ring up to register. The whole point about ringing up to register is to give Sky the opportunity to sell the broadband.
The 2 year broadband offer obviously straddles the first year of BT's CL so if Sky can get people to contract for 2 years (to both Sky broadband and Sky TV including SS) then that reduces the possibility of defections to BT in 12 months time.
Finally, if Sky does lose La Liga in 12 months time then they'll just deal with that issue at the time - possibly by closing SS5 and moving the Euro qualifiers and Eredivisie to SS1 to SS4. Obviously that would look embarrassing but so what? They are running a business and if SS5 can be used successfully as a marketing tool for the next 12 months then they may well think that is enough to justify it.
I'm in a similar predicament to the above in that I'm still in a BT Broadband contract but it expires on 7th August, so does anybody know if this free broadband deal with Sky will still be available by that date?
Have to say that as every one of these incentives gets revealed by Sky and BT, it makes it harder for consumers to work out which of the suppliers offers them the best deal - which I guess is what they want as it acts as a greater deterrent to switch from one to the other.
The other thing an incentive like this is, of course, is something that on the surface looks very good for consumers (who wouldn't want two free years of broadband?!) but will ultimately be paid by them in other ways in the same manner than the free BT Sport for broadband subscribers was offset by contract extensions and higher monthly fees.
At the end of day, we are merely pawns in the game between Sky and BT and although you'd like to think consumers would see through things like this and become more and more savvy to prevent themselves being screwed over by either company, you have to wonder whether many will actually do so.
Interest analysis mlt11 - do you (or anyone else) think that BT will have to do something to respond?
Or will they sit tight and wait for next year, for now using BT Sport as a way to attract non Sky customers where the appeal of free broadband (or discounted fibre) with Sky Sports is not as appealing?
I guess the question is how much is their strategy getting people to switch to their broadband (especially from Sky) verses not loosing broadband customers.
For me the international games are of limited appeal as I would tend to watch England games when they were on and i'm never that bothered about the other home nations - let alone other European countries like Ireland or Belgium.
Germany intl games will remain fta thanks to their new contract with RTL (albeit in SD) and Italy games are often fta on RAI Uno and that sort of thing will continue after this deal kicks in. I know that fewer games will clash in future but Euro Qualifiers are not really that interesting to me anyway.
As for Erdevisie games - I had live access to them on ESPN recently and on Screensport yonks ago but they don't really do it for me
Russian league games also appeared on ESPN in the past - not interesting
Portugese games often turn up on Sunday nights on RTPi on 13e - yawn
Serie A games were passed from pillar to post before ESPN/BT bought them as they are not good box office. I've been watching them since Maradona still played for Napoli and it's not a good league at the moment.
Polish Elkastrasa games on that VERY short lived Sky channel whose name escapes me (might still be on connected Freeview (where they often commentated over the Polish commentary)) - forget it!
In general the only two half-decent European leagues which were in any way competitive in 2013-14 were the Premier League and La Liga
I did watch a reasonable amount of La Liga last season on Sky but not a huge amount and if they lost the rights I wouldn't mind that much.
Having said all of this I consider myself to be reasonably interested in European league football but I don't see it as a premium product for which it is worth paying extra. I grew up in the 80s when there was virtually no live football and TV cameras were even banned from First Division grounds. When Sky first won the PL rights I was over the moon and to have so much football on TV was wonderful. However - you have to draw the line somewhere. If we are actively looking around for broadcasters to buy up rights to obscure leagues just so they can say that they show them how on earth are we all going to find the time to watch them all?
Interest analysis mlt11 - do you (or anyone else) think that BT will have to do something to respond?
Or will they sit tight and wait for next year, for now using BT Sport as a way to attract non Sky customers where the appeal of free broadband (or discounted fibre) with Sky Sports is not as appealing?
I guess the question is how much is their strategy getting people to switch to their broadband (especially from Sky) verses not loosing broadband customers.
I wouldn't expect BT to do anything major new straight away - because both their content offering (and indeed Sky's) will remain almost identical next season to what it was last season.
I don't see SS5 as a move of any significance by Sky - it's just another way of presenting their offering.
If we are actively looking around for broadcasters to buy up rights to obscure leagues just so they can say that they show them how on earth are we all going to find the time to watch them all?
Am I the exception?
Not at all, infact I'd say you're the same as the vast majority of football fans. Its just that on DS there are a few people that are obsessed with channels buying up and showing (or not buying up and not showing) football that is of interest to a tiny number of people.
I wouldn't expect BT to do anything major new straight away - because both their content offering (and indeed Sky's) will remain almost identical next season to what it was last season.
I don't see SS5 as a move of any significance by Sky - it's just another way of presenting their offering.
BT's big move will come in 12 months time.
If they can avoid matches clashing it appears to be aimed at creating a go-to channel for non-English football. If it's e.g. a Tuesday evening and you're not sure what's on, put on SS5 and see if there's any live football. It would be a stronger offering if they also had the German and/or Italian leagues, sounds like BT have those locked up at present. SS5 will also hopefully avoid the annoying missing the first half of La Liga matches on Sunday evening. Also a response to the move by BT to keep their broadband customers by giving away the sports channel, which was a sensible move, nice for BT they can afford to do it.
I still say BT Sports will stop being "free" to broadband customers sometime in the next 15 or so months.
If they can avoid matches clashing it appears to be aimed at creating a go-to channel for non-English football. If it's e.g. a Tuesday evening and you're not sure what's on, put on SS5 and see if there's any live football. It would be a stronger offering if they also had the German and/or Italian leagues, sounds like BT have those locked up at present. SS5 will also hopefully avoid the annoying missing the first half of La Liga matches on Sunday evening. Also a response to the move by BT to keep their broadband customers by giving away the sports channel, which was a sensible move, nice for BT they can afford to do it.
I still say BT Sports will stop being "free" to broadband customers sometime in the next 15 or so months.
I think BT Sport will stop being free to it's broadband customers, when they start covering the Champions League from the 2015-2016 football season.
Ian.
I think BT Sport will stop being free to it's broadband customers, when they start covering the Champions League from the 2015-2016 football season.
Ian.
Does anyone know if these free broadband offers lock you in to that exact broadband tier for the length of the contract? Openreach still haven't bothered installing Fibre round here (It's supposed to have been installed on four separate occasions now and is delayed time and time again, over a year now since its first promised start date!), so currently we can't get fibre.
However, if we take the 2 year free broadband, and then by some miracle Openreach manage to install fibre within those 2 years and Sky offer it, can we upgrade to fibre (paying obviously)? Or would there be any sort of early contract termination fees on the 2 free years if we move to fibre?
Does this lock you into a Sky Sports and Sky TV contract for 12 months for Fibre and 24 months for ADSL or can you cancel Sky Sports and/Sky TV in that time?
Comments
I have Sky Fibre and the Variety Bundle. To upgrade to Sky Sports is £22p/m however with this offer it will only work out at £12p/m. Considering I was thinking of upgrading to Sky Sports for the new season anyway this was a no brainer...
Edit : was replying to ocav.
We don't know if they have got La Liga after next season (current deal ends 2014/15). Do they know they have got it or not? I'm sure they would be singing it from the rooftops by now if they had - as they did with other extensions/renewals. Conclusion: they have it for one year for sure thereafter unknown.
Surely this is even more of an incentive for BT to outbid Sky for La Liga? That would be something of a champagne moment. Having your established rival in this business deciding to call a new channel "your new home for European Football" for its customers, implying domestic as well as international coverage, and the club games on it being a couple per week from the Eredivisie and possibly a handful each Spring from the Coppa Italia - wouldn't that look farcical? Unless this in a way is Sky running some rights down (CL/La Liga?) in those rights last years and the Eredivisie is a weaker patchover to make up slightly the number of games lost to BT in the years ahead (something like the Top14/Pro12 deals as make-up for AP and European rugby losses?). Having said that currently as a subscriber to both I would apparently be in for even more viewing choices next year so welcome it!
I think some considered last year as something of a golden year in football coverage. Well next season we will seemingly have even more games on with a 5th European league added in to the schedules.
Yes Sky have La Liga next season but it looks far from certain that they have it after next season otherwise im sure they would of taken great delight in mentioning something along the lines of an increase in coverage.
So after next season they lose Champion's League and possibly La Liga so apart from the Dutch League they can really forget about all the other major European Leagues unless they are looking at maybe the Russian and Portuguese League, how many would really be interested in anything outside the main 4?.
At the end of the day I think this channel is going to end up only with main European Friendlies and off course qualifiers all of which could of been put on any of it's other main 4 channels.
Just got to register for SS5 on Thursday and 2 years of free Broadband will follow :-)
With Sky Unlimited ordinarily priced at £7.50 per month, Sky Sports customers can save £180 on their internet bills over the first two years.
Source http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/news/2014/06/sky_offers_2_years_free_unlimited_broadband_to_sky_sports_customers/
Sky's European football rights look weaker than those held by BT and without La Liga are drastically weaker. So Sky could still persist in calling it "your home for European football" after a year, I suppose, technically it could still be home for Sky's European football, but calling it that seems tenuous even from the get-go. (in fact going forward calling it "tenuous" might seem like an understatement - "a mistake" might be more accurate and "farcical", heading forward, or is that stretching it?). Depends on La Liga but who would have thought a couple of years ago of thinking that a Sky branding of a channel would depend on La Liga!
To people not paying attention to rights deals but happily following football could it not look like, amongst other things, Sky were about to take a run at BT's Euro leagues (which as far as info is available are out of reach for years)? I mean, Sky can't even show goals/highlights from the leagues to which BT have total exclusivity.
This could be viewed as Sky's last throw of the dice with their CL rights (and possibly La Liga) - to milk an extra year of bb with a 2 yr commitment from some who may not fully comprehend/remember what's around the corner re CL (and possibly La Liga)?
In year 1, the channel will have a strong content line-up - CL, La Liga, Eredivisie and Euro qualifiers. That is easily a strong enough line-up for the channel to appear credible to the average subscriber.
Of course we know that Sky has lost CL from the following year and could lose La Liga. But whilst it's pretty widely known that BT has won the CL, the average subscriber won't be familiar with the expiry date for La Liga rights.
Some people may well falsely interpret the channel as an indicator that Sky may be planning to obtain additional European football in future seasons.
I suspect that SS customers will receive the channel even if they don't ring up to register. The whole point about ringing up to register is to give Sky the opportunity to sell the broadband.
The 2 year broadband offer obviously straddles the first year of BT's CL so if Sky can get people to contract for 2 years (to both Sky broadband and Sky TV including SS) then that reduces the possibility of defections to BT in 12 months time.
Finally, if Sky does lose La Liga in 12 months time then they'll just deal with that issue at the time - possibly by closing SS5 and moving the Euro qualifiers and Eredivisie to SS1 to SS4. Obviously that would look embarrassing but so what? They are running a business and if SS5 can be used successfully as a marketing tool for the next 12 months then they may well think that is enough to justify it.
Have to say that as every one of these incentives gets revealed by Sky and BT, it makes it harder for consumers to work out which of the suppliers offers them the best deal - which I guess is what they want as it acts as a greater deterrent to switch from one to the other.
The other thing an incentive like this is, of course, is something that on the surface looks very good for consumers (who wouldn't want two free years of broadband?!) but will ultimately be paid by them in other ways in the same manner than the free BT Sport for broadband subscribers was offset by contract extensions and higher monthly fees.
At the end of day, we are merely pawns in the game between Sky and BT and although you'd like to think consumers would see through things like this and become more and more savvy to prevent themselves being screwed over by either company, you have to wonder whether many will actually do so.
Or will they sit tight and wait for next year, for now using BT Sport as a way to attract non Sky customers where the appeal of free broadband (or discounted fibre) with Sky Sports is not as appealing?
I guess the question is how much is their strategy getting people to switch to their broadband (especially from Sky) verses not loosing broadband customers.
For me the international games are of limited appeal as I would tend to watch England games when they were on and i'm never that bothered about the other home nations - let alone other European countries like Ireland or Belgium.
Germany intl games will remain fta thanks to their new contract with RTL (albeit in SD) and Italy games are often fta on RAI Uno and that sort of thing will continue after this deal kicks in. I know that fewer games will clash in future but Euro Qualifiers are not really that interesting to me anyway.
As for Erdevisie games - I had live access to them on ESPN recently and on Screensport yonks ago but they don't really do it for me
Russian league games also appeared on ESPN in the past - not interesting
Portugese games often turn up on Sunday nights on RTPi on 13e - yawn
Serie A games were passed from pillar to post before ESPN/BT bought them as they are not good box office. I've been watching them since Maradona still played for Napoli and it's not a good league at the moment.
Polish Elkastrasa games on that VERY short lived Sky channel whose name escapes me (might still be on connected Freeview (where they often commentated over the Polish commentary)) - forget it!
In general the only two half-decent European leagues which were in any way competitive in 2013-14 were the Premier League and La Liga
I did watch a reasonable amount of La Liga last season on Sky but not a huge amount and if they lost the rights I wouldn't mind that much.
Having said all of this I consider myself to be reasonably interested in European league football but I don't see it as a premium product for which it is worth paying extra. I grew up in the 80s when there was virtually no live football and TV cameras were even banned from First Division grounds. When Sky first won the PL rights I was over the moon and to have so much football on TV was wonderful. However - you have to draw the line somewhere. If we are actively looking around for broadcasters to buy up rights to obscure leagues just so they can say that they show them how on earth are we all going to find the time to watch them all?
Am I the exception?
I wouldn't expect BT to do anything major new straight away - because both their content offering (and indeed Sky's) will remain almost identical next season to what it was last season.
I don't see SS5 as a move of any significance by Sky - it's just another way of presenting their offering.
BT's big move will come in 12 months time.
Dutch football is just a response to BT showing European football.
If they can avoid matches clashing it appears to be aimed at creating a go-to channel for non-English football. If it's e.g. a Tuesday evening and you're not sure what's on, put on SS5 and see if there's any live football. It would be a stronger offering if they also had the German and/or Italian leagues, sounds like BT have those locked up at present. SS5 will also hopefully avoid the annoying missing the first half of La Liga matches on Sunday evening. Also a response to the move by BT to keep their broadband customers by giving away the sports channel, which was a sensible move, nice for BT they can afford to do it.
I still say BT Sports will stop being "free" to broadband customers sometime in the next 15 or so months.
I think BT Sport will stop being free to it's broadband customers, when they start covering the Champions League from the 2015-2016 football season.
Ian.
Agreed.
However, if we take the 2 year free broadband, and then by some miracle Openreach manage to install fibre within those 2 years and Sky offer it, can we upgrade to fibre (paying obviously)? Or would there be any sort of early contract termination fees on the 2 free years if we move to fibre?
Not sure if BT will start two new channels but I could see BT maybe starting a red button service on there sports channels.
Darren