Originally Posted by sheff71:
“It's not really a straight comparison against Sky Sports though, as these are premium channels (for most anyway) and for most the BT Sports are free to any BT broadband subscriber (whether interested in sport or not). A better comparison may have been the previous free ESPN channels on VM XL maybe (as I think they had the UFC too, and plenty of football of varying quality!)”
Sorry for delay in replying to this.
I understand the point you are making but I think the analysis in my previous post still makes sense and I'll explain why.
Yes, I agree that anyone receiving a channel automatically for free is proportionately much less likely to watch it than someone who is paying for it.
Thus, last season, someone paying £10 to subscribe to ESPN on Sky would be much more likely to watch ESPN than someone getting ESPN automatically with VM XL.
However the situation with BT Sport is a bit different. Whilst it is "free" for BT broadband customers they don't get it automatically. It's an "opt-in" service. On the BT TV platform there are equipment requirements and the need to take a basic BT TV package. Anyone on the Sky platform already only has to ring-up but they do still have to take that trouble.
So far, under 10% of the 6m BT broadband customers have "opted-in" to BT Sport. Because that figure is so low
so far I think it's reasonable to assume that those people who have signed up to BT Sport
so far for free are likely to be dedicated sports fans.
This I think my previous analysis re likely viewing figures stacks
up at the moment.
If at some point in the future the majority of BT broadband customers are getting BT Sport for free then I agree it would be much more comparable to the VM XL situation. But that isn't the position at the moment.
Finally I should say my analysis was only meant to be a broad brush attempt to get a rough feel for likely viewing figures. I wouldn't expect it to be perfect and of course there are other factors also to consider - eg Sky Sports having a higher proportion of viewers interested in other sports whereas BT Sport viewers are likely to skew more heavily towards football.
EDIT: Partially dealt with already by derek500 at post 490 - thanks.
Originally Posted by sheff71:
“On the viewing figures quoted on here (where it's 0.1% and similar), is that just a percentage of all channels at that time, or of BT sports potential audience (e.g. 0.1% of the 550k)?”
It's 0.1% of the total number of people watching TV at that time in all UK homes.
I realise that that is not a particularly meaningful % figure for BT Sport (or any premium channel not in all UK homes) but that is how TV ratings are reported.