Sky and BT share Premier League rights

[bertcocaine]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18430036

Premier League rights sold to BT and BSkyB for £3bn
The new rights deal covers the 2013-14 to 2015-16 seasons

BT has secured the rights to broadcast 38 Premier League games for each of the seasons from 2013-14 to 2015-16.

BSkyB will continue to show the majority of matches, having secured the rights to 116 games per season, the Premier League said.

The total of 154 live matches is 16 more than currently broadcast and more than 40% of all top-level matches.

The sales raised £3.018bn, an increase of £1.25bn on the current package which shares rights between BSkyB and ESPN.

BBC sports news correspondent James Pearce said the amount paid for the new deal was "staggering", marking a rise of 70% on the present deal.

A new player in the UK TV market for live football - and the first time a broadcaster has bought rights that doesn't have a satellite platform for broadcast. Interesting.. and likely to make it more challenging for streamers amongst others with yet another platform required.

[RDuncan8]

Will BT Vision still have the Sky Sports 1/2 deal? or is that due to expire/can be terminated etc?

Not a fan of BT. Only ever had problems (with internet and phones) and their customer service was/is rubbish.

Anyone have BT Vision? Worth it?

[FootyLive]

Used to have BT vision but got rid as it was a pile of crap.

Interesting what will happen here - BT state they will lauch a new football based channel.
Will this BT channel also be available on the Sky platform?? Sky Sports are available on the BT Vision platform (after a lenghtly court case if i remember rightly). ESPN is availble on both. If BT want to actually make this work i suspect they gonna have to make it available on sky as well - could be wrong thou

I wouldnt get a BT box again for 38 games a season

[DEAD_MAN_WALKING]

Hasn't the BBC did this or tried to do this...?

[bertcocaine]

BT (and their 'Vision') are shite. Completely agree with your comments RDuncan8 about their problems and beyond terrible customer service.

I wouldn't pay BT to watch football if they had all 154 games.

I'm not clear where it stands on the coverage angle - BT's complaint against Sky was about the price, not the availability. Ofcom forced Sky to peg their wholesale price below the retail price - Sky promptly increased their retail price to make BT lose money. Can see similar games being played, but BT Vision isn't wide spread enough to return on their investment without making it more widely available - also curious as to where this new channel will fit on Terrestrial Digital, unless ESPN are planning to remove their channel? Not sure if there are any free, would have to do some research..

edit: read a little of the current usage, and figure one of two possible options on BT Vision.

Either, they time share with another channel (possibly replacing ESPN who currently timeshare) although they would need a lot of filler to match the times used by ESPN.

Or, they will create an IPTV channel which is only accessible through the BT Vision box, and probably available to BT Broadband customers too. That might give them a big enough base, but given the economy I doubt it. They may also offer a service similar to Sky Go, to allow non customers to purchase access.

I think it says a lot that ESPN have dropped out, given the amount of noise they made when they got the rights about being seriously interested in football - clearly didn't pay off enough to out bid BT. Hopefully BT will regret this choice too.

[actonbhoyrob]

Bt will share its content on sky platform etc the only advantage to actual bt customers is there interactive feature during the games

[bertcocaine]

Bt will share its content on sky platform etc the only advantage to actual bt customers is there interactive feature during the games

and what are you basing that on? All they've said so far is they will make it available to 'other platforms' - that could mean the general internet or even Top Up TV/Tiscali or similar and doesn't guarantee Sky. All they've committed to at this stage is enter negotiations, but as pointed out elsewhere given the acrimony from the whole SS1/SS2 on terrestrial and that the Sky channels on BT Vision are SD only.. plus not clear how it will be on terrestrial as yet, since there isn't space for a new HD channel, so presumably HD would only be available on BT through the internet connection? (if then - can BT vision boxes cope with HD? don't think they offer HD at the moment.. so upgrades required for existing customers?)

BT may tie up with Sky and wholesale to them (as ESPN currently do) or they may go for a standalone channel on satellite and sell it direct (as Setanta did). They may decide after negotiations that their best option is to have the only place to get all PL games live (since they will still have SS1/SS2 available).

Expect more Sky games to be in 3D in the coming seasons, and them to heavily play their 'only place to get 116 games in HD' card. Because of that, I expect BT will not end up wholesaling through Sky, but whatever option they go for, they will find they will not make more money having spent £800m. Of course with fibre broadband BT might dial up their box and offer 3D, but I sincerely doubt it. There is also the question of who will provide the coverage - BT are not a television company and don't have studios, presenters or camera crews.. be interesting to see where they go to get this covered.

[bertcocaine]

interesting hour long conference call with questions to BT staff about Premier League rights and distribution:

http://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperfor...aguerights.wma

[DEAD_MAN_WALKING]

I was reading about this in the free metro paper on the bus home yesterday - ESPN lose out to BT in war to secure £3bn Premier League broadcast rights

[bertcocaine]

yeah apparently ESPN and Al Jazerra both made bids, although no mention had been made of how close they were to BT's, or if they were even for the same packages. First time Sky have lost their Saturday lunch time slot I think, which suggests either a change of priorities for Sky, or that BT went for the jugular. In which case it's difficult to figure exactly what ESPN went for.. did they go for the Sat evening games again, and Sky outbid, or move their focus and lose? I was expecting ESPN to have a serious go at getting more not disappearing completely. Given the rise in total sale price maybe they were simply caught off guard, and Sky didn't expect BT to do that. I'm not clear on what the competition rules are now with 7 packages, previously Sky weren't allowed more than 5 out of 6, it could now be 5 out of 7 in which case the two BT won weren't contested by Sky?

The whole process and the pick decisions are pretty murky!

and quoting that article:

A spokesman said it was ‘more likely’ people wanting to watch games would need a BT broadband package, but insisted no firm plans had yet been decided.

My money is on IPTV, stand alone channel on satellite (not sold through Sky), maybe VM channel, and 'Go' type service online for mobile and internet.

[DEAD_MAN_WALKING]

I was expecting the same mate with ESPN(Big Bucks Disney) taking on Sky, i really dont know what happened here...?

[actonbhoyrob]

I cant find the article where i read that what my post says but imo with the big fuss they did with sky took em to court about ss being avalable on all platforms i think it will end up avalable on sky and virgin but in what way i dont know it could be stand alone yes like setanta but we all know what happend there if they do go down the bt exclusivley then will f* most of us streamers up and i dont think many pple actually have bt vision so hopefully they use thier heads and put on sky/vm and make it cheap to force sky to lower there price

I don’t see BT as a Sports channel – what makes you think you can do this better than Sky?
We have lots of experience in TV – we have over 700,000 households using our BT Vision service and this is growing faster than both Sky and Virgin Media’s TV services. We will team up with high quality partner companies to produce this channel and are confident we can offer a great show.

Me thinks they will just use espn comms

[bertcocaine]

whatever article you read that said it's definitely going to happen, is pure speculation. They haven't decided anything as yet, and have only made vague pronouncements on the subject.

I also said this above, but i'll repeat it - BT didn't take Sky to court over AVAILABILITY, they took them to OFCOM over PRICE. Under the terms of that ruling, any wholesaling done by BT of their new channel will require the wholesale price to be pegged to the retail price. They will probably not do a deal with Sky because Sky will want to sell it at cost or at least no more expensive than BT's price, BT won't accept that because they would lose big time, or be forced to make their retail price way too high. They can't charge more than £9/£10 per month. They do have the chance to make money out of pubs, given Sky's extortionate pub prices, but given pubs can now freely buy decoders from other EU countries, they might not get that far down that route either.

I'm no fan of the way Sky operates - but BT are a thousand times worse, and have also built an empire on public funded network infrastructure, and have been battered by OFCOM themselves many times to force them to play fair. All their attitude to Sky is sour grapes because Sky moved into telephone and broadband and aren't a rip off with their pricing on that side. I pay £20pm for fibre, and £12.60pm line rental for my phone, free evening/weekend landline calls. For the same package, BT charge £26 and £14.60 respectively, plus they throttle p2p and have the world's worst customer services. Sky's on the other hand is generally good in my experience. BT have tried to play the same game with TV by undercutting Sky, but that just shows how stupid their management team must be.. taking on Sky at Pay TV is like taking on the USA at naval warfare. There can be only one. The only sad thing is BT won't go bust because they are too big, and the government wouldn't allow BT to collapse given how big a part they are of the country's backbone.

[bertcocaine]

some more news on this. Having committed to 3/4 of a billion, BT now have to commit to a further £100m:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012...premier-league

ITV plans to bid for BT Premier League production contract

BT Vision is expected to put out a three-year tender for companies to produce the 38 games it has a licence to air
ITV is planning to bid for the BT Premier League production contract.


ITV has denied it is interested in airing any of BT's Premier League matches, but admitted that it is planning to pitch for the £100m-plus contract to produce the telecoms company's live football coverage.

BT, which owns the BT Vision subscription video-on-demand service, will formally put out a three-year tender, valued at between £100m and £132m, for the contract to produce its football coverage and has opened early stage talks with ITV about a potential partnership.

ITV intends to pitch for the business. Production subsidiary ITV Studios already makes the English-language commentary for Al-Jazeera's Sports, fronted by Gary Lineker, Ruud Gullit, Alan Shearer and Terry Venables, for expats throughout the Middle East.

BT has publicly said that it intends to open talks with as many potential TV and internet content distributors as possible in order to recoup the £738m it paid for the live TV rights for 38 Premier League games per season over three years from 2012/13.

As part of the early-stage discussions, it is understood that an idea was floated that one, or potentially two maximum, lesser Premier League games might be shown on ITV in order to promote the sports channel BT intends to launch next year.

However, a spokesman for ITV made it clear that the tentative idea was not something that the broadcaster was interested in and was not considered a serious element of any deal with BT.

"We are not talking to BT about taking any of their Premier League matches for broadcast on ITV channels," said the ITV spokesman. "If BT were looking for a production company to produce their Premier League coverage, that is something that we would of course look at, as we do with other potential contracts."

BT has paid on average about £6.5m per game and needs to maximise revenues by gaining broad distribution.

However, if any of BT's matches were to be aired on ITV, they would in a best-case scenario make between £1m and £1.5m from advertising and sponsorship. This is nowhere near enough to cover what BT paid for the rights.

Channel 4 looked at bidding for Premier League rights before the auction in June, but decided against such a move because it could not make the sums add up for an advertising-funded business model.

Making any Premier League matches available on free-to-air TV would also undermine the value of a pay-TV subscription model.

Several analysts believe BT does not even have the right under its deal with the Premier League to sub-license matches to other broadcasters in such a manner.

The production is likely to be contested by sports production companies such as IMG Worldwide, All3Medias, North One Television and Sunset + Vine, which is owned by Welsh-based production group Tinopolis.

and BT have acquired more high profile sport for a new sports channel, with exclusive live Premiership Rugby rights:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19571712

[Redbullsnation]

hmm?? Lets hope the new BT Sports Channel will be available throughout the UK and not just on BT "Blind Vision"

[bertcocaine]

hmm?? Lets hope the new BT Sports Channel will be available throughout the UK and not just on BT "Blind Vision"

it will have to be otherwise BT have just chucked away a cool three quarters of a billion. on just BT vision, they'd have to crank up the charges and then somehow sell it to 10 million people.

[bertcocaine]

lol.. and people think sky are evil:

Around 10 million BT customers are being told that phone and broadband bills are to rise by up to 6%, in the latest blow to cash-strapped households.


BT is hiking its prices from January 5, with phone calls, line rental and broadband rising by up to 5.9% - more than twice the rate of inflation, at 2.6%.

The group, which recently agreed deals worth £890 million to secure rights to screen Premier League football and Premiership rugby matches.....

[jamjars]

lol.. and people think sky are evil:

that's the problem we face, BT buy the rights to show football and then stick the football fans with the bill! thank the lord for sopcast

[TheHurtLocker873]

Rather than start a new thread I thought I'd put this here...... http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/c...123100646.html

The power that TV has over football clubs is just wrong.

[bertcocaine]

hmm think there may be more to that story.. I cannot see the police changing their mind for just that reason. If it's safety (which as a local derby it will be) then they would leave themselves open to a nightmare if they said 'yeah ok then' and something happens. Also Sky are usually happy to be flexible and swap games around to meet the needs of safety, etc.. usually it's only the fans they don't mind inconveniencing, although to be fair that's down to the UEFA agreement about 3pm Saturday games and not Sky, and not wanting to detract from their own viewing figures by showing more than one game at a time. I get that, if you pay Sky for 115 games and many are shown as 2/3/4 games at a time on different channels.. then you aren't getting 115 games.