EPL rights in NZ won by BEINSports for next season.

http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/loss-premier-league-r...

New Zealand EPL rights have gone to an Al Jazeera sports subsidiary called beIN sports, which insiders say paid $10 million for the next three seasons as Campbell Gibson reports in today’s print edition of NBR.

Then ten million dollars, or $3.33 million a year, was just too rich for Spark. Lightbox Sport sells PremierLeaguePass.com season passes for $99, meaning it would need 33,333 subscribers just to cover programming costs. The joint venture has never commented on subscription numbers but there are indications it has fewer than 10,000 (PremierLeaguePass has 4301 followers on Twitter and 6783 on Facebook).

Sky TV could potentially get away with a third of that number of subscribers, given its Fanpass.co.nz already charges $299 a year (each) for Super Rugby, NRL and Formula One – but there was obviously a question over price elasticity.

But wait, it's not over yet.

Overnight, a person close to the deal revealed beIN’s real interest was in Australian rights but that, in the convoluted process of pursuing them, it paid an inflated price for the New Zealand rights. The Al Jazeera unit is said to now realise its blunder, and the insider predicts it might on-sell New Zealand rights to Lightbox Sport or Sky for a price below $10 million to recoup some of what its spent. And Lightbox Sport has confirmed that beIN is shopping around local rights. If there are no takers, beIN could launch its own streaming service in New Zealand.

Either way, things will have to be wrapped up by the time the 2016/2017 EPL kicks off in August.

Moved from News Discussion and Football Blogging to English Football Discussion

Please let them come on board over here! Use a lot of beIN for streaming a range of sports already, and it is excellent.

PremierLeaguePass was to be fair a bit of a waste. Good coverage, but always found the service would cut out, or the quality of the streams was watchable, but was so blotchy it would start to hurt after 5-10 minutes. 

unsure the legality of posting that paywalled article is.

but anyway they don't have the australian rights, Optus have the australian rights. wonder if bein will look to on-sell or set up shop here?

Optus do have the rights in Oz but rumour is that they will sell some back to Fox sports.

Interesting, but not surprising. The quality of PLP has been going downhill recently and felt very much like they were winding down. Bein’s streaming service is supposed to be quite good so I guess best case scenario is they set one up here. With EPL and French rugby gone, and reduced golf coverage is this just about the end of the road for Coliseum?

Not winding down, but probably their focus was in their merger with lightbox.

looking at the football rights they have over in aussie they could actually make a hell of a football streaming service (assuming they have the same rights in NZ of course)

i really hope they don't onsell it to sky..

wasn't this known a couple of months ago? 

Ideally BeIN would on sell limited rights to TV (FTA or sky) and also open up their streaming service (which already exists so may be able to take advantage of some economies of scale?) in NZ. 

Dilema - I need advice on before 9:30 tonight. Lots of A League on and my "other team" being shown "Live" tonight at 1am against Foolham. Do I re-instate Sky sports and weaken? or do I hold strong and resist the upgrade temptation?

Slightly late, but perhaps see if a friend will let you use their Sky Go login (on the off chance it actually works).

Saved my money and glad I did. Yet again the crap hoops played piss poor in front of the cameras and got nailed by Foolham 3-1. Sometimes I wonder who is worse, QPR or the FFA and to be honest, they're about even. The number of cockups from the QPR owners over the last 10 seasons easily matches the FFA and their ones. So frustrating I just want to cry sometimes.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1603/S00022/premi...

Will this be the end of PLP?

Personally I am very fond of PLP and will be sad to see it go. I don't have Sky (it's overpriced rubbish) and PLP was in my opinion a perfectly reasonable price to watch any of the games live. Always worked for me and being able to watch the next day is great.