Originally Posted by Mark.:
“It makes you wonder, though - 10 years ago, Sky had the chance to appease the EC by sub-licensing half a dozen or so games to another broadcaster. No-one met the reserve price, so they kept their "monopoly" and the next rights auction was the first where they could only win 5/6 packages. The rest, they say, is history.
What if the BBC or ITV had met the reserve price? Or what if it had been set lower? We can only speculate, but I'm confident we wouldn't be having this discussion now.”
“It makes you wonder, though - 10 years ago, Sky had the chance to appease the EC by sub-licensing half a dozen or so games to another broadcaster. No-one met the reserve price, so they kept their "monopoly" and the next rights auction was the first where they could only win 5/6 packages. The rest, they say, is history.
What if the BBC or ITV had met the reserve price? Or what if it had been set lower? We can only speculate, but I'm confident we wouldn't be having this discussion now.”
I don't think the above would have made any difference long term.
Rights holders would have eventually realised they could make more money by dividing rights into packages and selling to more than one bidder.
Indeed even in the auction you referred to above, the rights had already been split into packages.
Plus no reason why BT (or someone else) wouldn't have still come into the market later as has actually happened.




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I would imagine Fox might see the recent developments as providing an opportunity to seek to purchase that part of Sky it doesn't already own.