Sky forced to sell sports channels for less..

[Russ]

..to Virgin Media and BT Vision.

Personally, I think this is a bit of a disgrace. Sky invest millions a year in sports broadcasting, and BT/Virgin invest nothing. BT now say they plan to offer Sky Sports for less than Sky themselves. As a sky customer I won't see savings, i can't switch to BT Vision becuase you need at least 2mb broadband and becuase i dont live within 30cm's off the exchange i barely get 1mb (thanks BT) and Virgin isnt available to me either becuase I live in North Norfolk and they havent got anyway of getting service to me.

Unless i'm overlooking something obvious here, whats the point in sky bothering? they'd be better off letting BT and Virgin broadcast sports and reselling their packages.

[Terbinator]

Maybe they should target the FA instead as there the ones who sell off the packages.

[jim]

I'm tempted to agree, but Sky have got such a huge monopoly on the sports market at the moment that they're always going to be subject to things like this.

At the end of the day, if they make roughly equal profit (I know it's hard to measure) between selling to their own customers and selling them to other customers through BT/Virgin, then I don't have a problem with it.

Where that margin is, I have no idea, so it's hard to comment further personally.

[TheAnimus]

Hmm I Don't know snooty, if you let sky go down that route, they become a channel, the ONLY channel.

They can pretty much dictate the price, because they outbid everyone to the FA, then just charge the consumers more and more because no one can compete.

I think this is why I just couldn't give a toss about the FA, the quality of play isn't that much better than the cheaper alternative, which is often more fun because you can take part too

[jim]

Hmm I Don't know snooty, if you let sky go down that route, they become a channel, the ONLY channel.

Thing is, that's already the case, surely?

OnDigital tried. Collapsed.
Setanta tried. Collapsed.
ESPN are the next contender.

I could mention the fact that since the competition commission forced Sky to hand matches over to Setanta/ESPN it's become far worse for the consumer, but that's another story.

It will take some serious measures from the government to end the Sky monopoly on sports - or more specifically football, since that's the big seller in the UK. Far beyond what's going on at the moment.

[Lucio]

The only sensible answer here would be to ban exclusive contracts on sports broadcasting, and instead the FA sets a fee which it deems reasonable to be able to broadcast it. Then you get some competition into the market as each can make a calculation of cost per package * number of expected customers to cover their bid costs.

[Barrichello]

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-channe...ml#post1900626

[robmaio]

Unfortunately, the regulators will not stop until they feel that they have "solved" the problem. Ultimately it will only lead to a deteriation in the quality of programming.

[Flash477]

Swings and roundabouts in some ways - BT forced to sell cheaper access, so sky offer cheaper broadband than BT - not Sky forced to sell cheaper sport access and BT sell cheaper than Sky. The only leech I see is virgin.

[Rave]

The only leech I see is virgin.

But Virgin Cable BB has been freaking awesome for me for the last 3 1/2 years. I can't remember the last time I had an outage for more than an hour, and I regularly get 1.2MB/s DLs from Steam and the like.

I'd like more HD channels out of my V+Box, but I hate Rupert Murdoch so much I'll never ever go with Sky, so I'll just have to lump it.

[Terbinator]

The fact its 'cable' for the majority of there services as well - hardly leeching.

[Flash477]

I was referring to Virgin being the Leech with regards to the sports coverage not BB