A couple of things worth adding to this: - BT will almost certainly make their games available to other platforms since doing otherwise won't make the numbers work. Nobody really expects the die-hard football fan to have two different boxes under their TV. That said, they've not formally announced how they'll be marketing them (currently they retail some, but not all of BSkyB's sports, so expect getting full access to those channels to be part of the discussion). BT Vision is very much the fourth most popular platform in the UK, but the AT&T comparison is a good one for telecoms and broadband.
- The comparison with the NFL is interesting. Considering the UK is roughly a fifth the size of the US marketplace, that makes this an excellent deal for the Premier League. The difference is that UK viewers have to pay premium subscriptions to get that football. Sky Sports is not a basic cable service as ESPN essentially is. Sky Sports costs an additional £20 a month ($31). And there's no free-to-air Premier League coverage aside from the highlights that run on the BBC. Although I know some NFL coverage is run at a loss, the scale of the US market means that Fox, CBS and NBC certainly go a long way to mitigate their costs with advertising. ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 looked at the rights for some live games, but at over £6m a match under this new deal, there's no way they could earn back that in advertising in the much smaller UK market. I wrote a little about this on my blog just after the deal was announced - http://www.adambowie.com/weblog/archive/003274.html. Adam (who is writing this to take his mind off a tense European Championship England v Italy quarter-final that's taking place right now. It's just going into extra time...) On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 8:48 PM, Joe Hass <[email protected]> wrote: > This happened a couple weeks ago, but it's worth noting around here > for a number of reasons. > > BSkyB retained a significant portion of the UK TV rights for the top > football (soccer) league (the English Premier League), but had to pay > through the nose to do so. More interestingly, BT Group (think AT&T in > the UK) got the rest of the matches. Effectively, the only way to > watch all the EPL matches live would be to subscribe to BT Vision (the > old Comcast Sports Net method, but national). ESPN, which had a > portion of the matches, lost them (Bristol wanted to expand their > British sports coverage for their ESPN product; they have a separate > channel, ESPN America, for US sports). > > The combined bid totaled £3.07 billion for three years, which works > out to US$1.58 billion per year. Two points of contrast: the four > broadcast partners of the NFL will pay $4.95 billion combined per year > in their new deal that starts in 2014. The previous deal with BSkyB > and ESPN was $933 million/year. > > An aside: the share prices for both BSkyB and BT took a hit the day > after the announcement, as investors thought they overpaid for the > rights. > > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/13/premier-league-tv-rights-3-billion-sky-bt > > The US rights (which had most matches on Fox Soccer Channel (with the > occasional handoff to the mothership) and a handful on ESPN) are still > under negotiation. Worth noting: La Liga (the top flight soccer league > in Spain that put two teams in the final four of the Champions League > (the European club championship)) sold their US rights to the Al > Jazeera Sports Network, which is supposed to launch in August 2012. > For us fans of the beautiful game, we're gonna have to dig up our > cable listings or find those hidden Internet feeds. > > Joe Hass > > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
