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Sky Sport needs to close a channel
Lanky
Posts: 252 Forum Member
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With Sky Sport's dwindling portfolio of sports rights isn't it time that they stopped trying to con people and close one, if not more, of their channels.
It used to be that it was only during the summer that they broadcast such programmes (over and over again) as The Premiership Years. Now this sort of filler is on all year round. They seem to have taken over some of ESPN Classic's programming as they are forever showing "classic" football matches. The ruse of turning Sky Sport 2 into "Ashes",during the summer, meant that they could get away with showing loads of old cricket matches.
With BT muscling in, Sky's sporting schedule is going to look increasingly threadbare. Time to cull a channel and reduce the subscription(some hope).
It used to be that it was only during the summer that they broadcast such programmes (over and over again) as The Premiership Years. Now this sort of filler is on all year round. They seem to have taken over some of ESPN Classic's programming as they are forever showing "classic" football matches. The ruse of turning Sky Sport 2 into "Ashes",during the summer, meant that they could get away with showing loads of old cricket matches.
With BT muscling in, Sky's sporting schedule is going to look increasingly threadbare. Time to cull a channel and reduce the subscription(some hope).
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Flicking through today, neither Sky Atlantic nor Sky Living had a better offering than Pick. I was very surprised
Having 4 Sky Sports channels is justifiable when, at some point during the week, there is live sport on all 4 channels, which usually happens most weekends. No point closing channels when more sport would end up behind the red button and not available in HD. It's not as if they would drop the price of the Sports Pack, so who gains by closing anything?
At around 3pm Sunday they have rights to 2 Live ODI cricket matches, a premiership football game, the Brazilian GP and Ashes highlights plus Live Golf finished just half an hour ago. Quick start Sky Sports 5.
They have only lost mid week Champions League matches.
Sky will continue to expand and keep buying up more. I expect the whole F1 rights will be snapped up leaving none with the BBC.
aren't the sponsors still super pissed off at sky having the f1 rights they do? could easily see the going back FTA
They're not overly excited by it no.
But i don't for one second think Sky will get exclusive rights.
Too keep the sponsors off his back, Bernie will have to make races available live on FTA TV and the way it is now, i don't see changing unless BBC can outbid Sky when they next come up for auction.
I think there's room for another league.
Every one knows the person who pays the piper calls the tunes, so why the hell dont they dont do more?
They dont give a **** cos apperantly the weekend football will do it all.
Erm no.
Hopefully BT Sports knock them out of business by keeping the UFC, adding NBA, Darts and along with the Champions League take more English Premier League games at the next bid.
The darts actually rates really quite well.
Often there is times when live sport is put on the red button due to 4 live things on at the same time so there is no need whatsoever. I'd rather there be filler at times than red button coverage all the time!
If it's not worth it to your business, cancel.
What I would like as a VM customer is to be able to watch them in HD at a reasonable price.
I totally agree that there will continue to be some kind of FTA coverage of F1 after the current BBC/Sky deal ends in 2018.
However I don't think it will be the same kind of FTA in the UK as there is now.
If you look at the 3 biggest TV markets (in Europe) for F1 - Germany, the UK & Italy - then you see that there is a different levels of FTA coverage as well as full coverage from the local Sky Sports (ie our own Sky Sports F1, Sky Sports Germany & Sky Sports F1 in Italy).
As we know, in the UK the agreement is that BBC can cover up to 50% of the season races and qualifying live, the remainder being exclusive to Sky Sports, with the BBC having extended highlights around 5 hours later.
However in Germany the national FTA broadcaster RTL has live coverage of every race and qualifying, and Sky Sports Germany has full live coverage of the full race meeting, ie Friday and Saturday practices are exclusive to Sky Germany and everything else is covered by both broadcasters.
In Italy the national FTA broadcaster RAI has a deal with Sky Sports Italy that is very similar to the the one between BBC and Sky in the UK, with up to 50% of the races being covered live by both broadcasters and the remainder being exclusively live of Sky Sports F1 Italy. The difference between the Italian FTA coverage and the British FTA coverage is that the races that are exclusively live on Sky Sports Italy are show in full later that day on RAI, where as the UK deal just gives the BBC rights to extended highlights.
Therefore I believe that it is most likely that the next UK TV rights will either follow the German model or the Italian model, personally I think it will more likely that the next contract will be like the Italian model.
However it cannot be totally ruled out that F1 could become exclusive to pay tv in the UK. Just look at France where F1 is no longer on FTA tv (in France you can get the Race itself on a basic cable/satelitte subscription on CANAL+, a french equal to Sky 1, and if you want the free practices and qualifing you have to subscribe to CANAL+ Sport, the french equal to Sky Sports.) So if Sky Sports or BT Sport put in a large enough bid then the FOM may accept this and give a large percentage of the right fees to the teams to make up for the reduced number of viewers and subsequent reduction in sponsorship fees the teams can charge.
Sport1 has got rights to show practice 1 +2 on Fridays, the channel is FTA on satellite
But this hasn't taken effect yet. In addition, there's more EPL games live on Sky Sports this season than any previous season. Indeed, the only 'major' loss I can think of is the one game a week they showed from the Aviva Premiership. They've started showing extra live games from the next tier down however to cover some of these gaps and they're showing the LV Cup games that used to be on BBC a few years back, so they aren't showing much less now (in terms of quantity at least, which is the argument I believe that's being made here) than they were when they had full rights to the AP.
It's the exact same sport and coverage you are watching whether its on SD or HD there is no justification for them charging you a penny more.
I'm sure someone will come around and retune them from your tv if you ask nicely
Get RB to bid for the sports packs directly instead of expecting to leech off Sky ?
Who is making you pay one penny to Sky? If you don't like what they provide and do not think it is value for money, then just stop subscribing.
Yes with sky it's a choice unlike some other tv service in the uk there is no choice it law you have to pay even if you not watch it you still have to pay for it
At the moment you can opt out - many have