Originally Posted by Jason C:
“...and the games they do show free-to-air will, in all likelihood, be of a far lower grade than the matches ITV have been screening as well.
You won't be seeing your Man City-Bayerns and your Arsenal-Dortmunds on the BT Sport Freeview channel.”
Originally Posted by Gray77:
“I'm really interested now in finding out what quota of games BT have to release for FTA viewing, and at which stages of the comp they have agreed to release them. If it's merely group stages then it will have a massive impact. The group stages are fun but the comp really only properly kicks in when the knock-out stages start in February.
I would argue that this season so far there have been only 3 games involving English sides that would be considered 'big time' games. The Arsenal v Dortmund games and the Man City v Bayern game were big type games, but apart from that? Chelsea and Man United are in groups with no real big time games and I'm ignoring non-English games because there is no incentive for them to be FTA in the group stages because they wouldn't draw big audiences.
It raises two questions. a. Are the rights really as valuable as BT think given that half of the comp involves relatively few big time games and the second half of the comp gives no guarantees of big games involving English sides? b. If the 'FTA' games are primarily the group games then will UEFA be happy with this given that the 'money' games will all be behind a paywall with small audiences and the resulting lack of 'watercooler' feel with the national population as a whole?”
The apparent minimum free to air requirements are shown below and that minimum certainly means fewer matches than ITV's current coverage:
Both the UEFA Champions League and Europa League finals will be free to air, and at least one of each participating British club's European fixtures will be shown free of charge per season.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/...#ixzz2kAHwbrE3
As the comment below from elsewhere indicates, piracy will be the only ultimate winner this time round and is that what we really want?
Quote:
“"Wow this is a major bonus for the illegal stream sites. They must be rubbing their hands. Basically its like THEY have just won the champs league rights! Their advertising revenue will go through the roof."”
Originally Posted by hard_to_beat:
“This is crucial for me, there is now absolutely no doubt about what BT are about, what they want, and what Sky have to do.
I'd expect Sky to ramp up their telephony operations significantly - could they even start to rattle the cage regarding how Openreach operates? No idea how that works, but it's interesting.
I don't buy into this idea that Sky are going to try to decimate BBC's rights. Sure, they will definitely got F1 exclusively, but I don't see Wimbledon as a major driver of subscriptions - it is, after all, only two weeks of action ultimately. The Six Nations deal last until 2017, by which time the PL auction wil have taken place. Sky already show rugby league's premier competition, the Super League, whilst snooker, atheletics and motorcycling are too niche to worry about. The only thing Sky might be interested in is the golf, and they won't pay a silly price for that either.
If anything, Sky might even try to drop some things they don't view as essential in order to add to the warchest - cricket will not be going anywhere, but they have already lost out with the H Cup and Premiership rugby union, more save money there.
Make no mistake, Sky will put everything into trying to reduces BT's PL games to rubbish or even nothing, they have to.”
It most certainly is a wake up call for senior Sky executives and their mission now is stop the poaching of any more significant sports rights and, above all, to ensure that BT only end up with one batch of EPL games in the next bidding round.
Originally Posted by mlt11:
“Sky 2015/16 Option A:
Pay £300m, Show CL
Sky 2015/16 Option B:
Pay £0, Do not show CL
Sky thinks that profits in 2015/16 will be higher under Option B and they are almost certainly right.
It is very, very unlikely that subscriber numbers will fall to the degree required for Sky to have lower profits under Option B than Option A.
Everything has a price. Sky will still have an incredibly strong sports portfolio in 2015/16 and there won't be anything like enough cancellations to make Option B less profitable than Option A.
It's always worth keeping things in perspective. When BT won its PL rights and said it'll have 18 1st picks and they'll be free to BT broadband customers many people thought that would have a major adverse impact on Sky. It hasn't - in the first quarter of BT Sport's PL coverage Sky's revenues rose 7% and churn rose by 0.1 percentage points.
For Option B to be less profitable than Option A churn would have to rise around 5 percentage points in 2015/16 - that isn't going to happen.”
To use a shipping analogy, there's been a dent in the hull but the ship hasn't been holed and there's no danger of either sinking or capsizing.
Whilst the Sky sports portfolio has been weakened by this development, it's not a crucial weakening and the Sky Sports channels still have the great advantage in summer when compared with BT Sports' relatively weak offerings (which ought to be improved). That said, Sky would be damaged by an ongoing haemorrhage of significant sports rights and I'm sure that they're aware of that fact today and that this is something that they must address.