Coliseum Sports - EPL Overlords

you can have both optus and Telstra though if you want. It sucks but I don't think it's any more anti competitive than sky holding all rugby rights and killing Saturn for instance.

fixed

although I do feel sorry for EPL fans in Aussie - and I agree with Tegal it doesn't smell right. 

Younger generations are extremely comfortable with managing multiple providers for their entertainment needs. Not much different to having spotify, or an extra utility bill. They will never subscribe to Sky given the high cost - these generations are used to paying for exactly what they want, not paying large fees for entire genres of material they're not interested in. 

People in their 30s/40s are the people we're seeing weigh up Sky versus going 100% online. Some are staying, some are going, so the overall subscriber numbers in that demographic are coming down. 

People in their 50s and older are most likely to stick with it long term, but numbers won't be increasing, just a slow decrease as they die. 

I see no demographics where Sky subscribers could possibly increase, unless as you say, they develop online delivery. 

In terms of that I think you're missing out their main competition in your comment - overseas providers with FAR more money. Netflix is massive, Panasonic are starting to release TVs with a Netflix button. Sky have got no show against outfits like that. They simply don't have access to the material people want to see, at any price. Their attempted introduction of online offerings has been farcical, and the quotes coming from their top brass give me no confidence that they're attempting to move with the times at all. 

They have virtually no power in the football rights business at the moment - even someone with serious performance issues and little infrastructure like PLP easily outbid them, just to trial it out with a view to the asian market. 

Sky have lost the last two bids now, and will only get to show it next season if BeIN decide to recoup a little cash - that's probably what will happen but it's not a given. Sky's money is smallfry to someone like BeIN, they could try another trial situation like PLP if they're in that mood. They do have Champions League too so could easily try out some kind of online football channel here as a research exercise. 

Whatever does happen, Sky won't have much influence on it. 

You hit that one right on the head. Sky will fail with looneys like Fellet and co stuck with the old model. Younger generations are more tech savy and would prefer an easy way but sky would rather promote its failing paytv business more than fanpass. No one has a clue about fanpass yet everyone knows about Netflix, Spotify and lightbox. I hope lightbox can take some decent sporting rights from sky. Lightbox even has a PS4 app! Sky is being run by people that are completely out of touch with technology and the larger population. Companies that stop innovating eventually die out.

you have missed one point - what does the person (or family) who want to watch Rugby, Cricket, Football, Golf, Movies, Kids TV, Documentary shows etc, they could sign up to each provider individually and possibly pirate some of the content but it doesn't matter what age this family is - if they have these needs SKY is not that bad of an option - with on demand now available at no extra cost on the decoder.  It's not quite as black and white as you say it is.

I don't know anyone under the age of forty with sky, even those with families.

@JamesDean I don't want it for free. As AJC said to access ECL I have to pay for sky basic & sport for what is a minimum of 6 group stage matches for my team. If sky would enable me to pay per match & watch at a time that suited me I'd be happy to. But they make it hard so I end up illegally streaming.

Genuinely concerned that we're loosing PLP. Sky's online platform doesn't have the same functionality so even if they do get it & offer it online as a stand alone online service it'll be a step backwards on PLP. And probably more expensive.

lol - your not looking hard enough.

speculation?

have you tried using the fanpass platform?


IF SKY get the PL rights I would be surprised if they don't offer a PLP type service with a number of featured games on live broadcast.


Could use the new on demand software for those who are already full SKY subsribers to access the other non broadcast games.

I think their other problem is their over reliance on rugby for generating profits. They invest more into rugby than any other sport so when rugby goes tits up and suddenly theres nothing left to milk then they blame the rugby world cup finishing as the reason for losing profit and customers. Being a sports broadcaster they should atleast try and expand the public awareness and interest in other sports (ASB Prem anyone?) so then the public would want to subscribe. Another part of the problem is that as kids we grew up watching the all blacks and NPC rugby on free to air TV and with all the sports going to sky then you have a much smaller audience and less public awareness of rugby over time. FTA TV channels are only interested in reality TV rather than sports broadcasting. I would love nothing more than to see sport heavily advertised on FTA TV and played live like what they do in Aus even if it only 2 games and an analysis show of the weeks games. They should be putting that stuff on FTA for wider public engagement. Think of channel 9's footy show you could do something similar for both Football (ASB Prem/A-league) and Rugby on Tuesday nights and 2 games live per week on FTA. If you have more kids watching sport you have more wanting to play sport and it generates public interest which is sadly going to crap like the Bachelor and Housewives of Auckland.

Did you realise there is FTA channel that is picking up sports slowly right?

Duke TV (Formerly TVNZ Pop-up)

It am happy to be proven wrong :) But when I did query them about using it for a delayed start for a cricket match they said it was only live.

You are correct. But these people or families are already Sky subscribers. And some of them are leaving Sky, so that demographic is decreasing, even though it is still absolutely fine as an option for many. I am one of these families. However I, like many others, are now at the point where the value of such an offering has diminished (rising cost, reduction of content) to the point that we are definitely getting rid of it as soon as Fiber is live on our street (recently finished street work, so not long now). Some will stay much longer than us, but the overall subscriber numbers will decrease.

They won't be replaced by younger subscribers or anyone else. Subscriber numbers simply will drop, no questions asked, UNLESS sky come out with a competitive online offering for their content. But even then, it will never have as much value as in years gone by, simply due to the fact that Netflix etc are now generating their own content. Some of the most popular tv series are made directly by Netflix now, so they are not available to any other networks regardless of cost. They just simply cannot be bid for by Sky. Netflix aren't interested in partnering with anyone else, they get their revenue direct from the customer.

Sky's key area of power right now is Rugby and Cricket. They have a monopoly-like hold on Rugby, and they signed a long contract with NZ Cricket a wee while ago. 

Personally I think NZC were a bit foolish with such a move given the rapidly changing industry but time will tell. 

I could definitely see Sports going in a similar direction to what is happening overseas now. For example I understand that the NFL run their own streaming website for direct revenue from fans, but then on-sell limited rights packages to FTA providers etc. This is an ideal model really - get one or two games per week FTA for the casual fan, while the more hardcore fans can buy the online offering so they can watch any game, any time. 

Sure but PLP launched a standalone service with premium content for a different sport at a pretty competitive price and got 10k subscribers - 10k!

Looking worrying with nothing confirmed for next season yet but I expect Sky will end up doing a last minute deal. Bein will surely want to recoup something rather than write the whole thing off so they'll end up agreeing a lower price with Sky at the 11th hour. We've seen it many times with Sky recently where things like Black Caps overseas tours and league tests etc don't get confirmed until very late - just last week the league test wasn't confirmed on Sky until the night before I think. And wasn’t there one year the NRL season wasn’t confirmed until very close to the start? If there is no deal then we might have to resort to illegal streams or an overseas subscription service like PLP – if I can find one that meets my needs with other sports then it might be the final push I need to dump Sky.

Typically poor experience for the Arsenal game this morning which summed up a PLP service that for me hasn't significantly improved since day 1. Had a new weird problem today too - for the first time it wouldn't go to full screen, just went to about three quarters with black strips down each side and still had the browser's toolbar etc. During the second half the controls (pause, fast forward etc) stopped working - usually wouldn't matter much on a weekend but when watching on a weekday before work I tend to use the skip forward 10 seconds button when the ball is out for throw ins, goal kicks, fouls, substitutions, stoppages etc to try and get the game finished a bit quicker. Then on 65 minutes it reset to the beginning and with the controls not working I had to close it, open it again and get back to where I was up to. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt this time though as the laptop had been upgraded to Windows 10 last week and though we haven’t had any other compatibility issues yet it’s possible PLP’s system just didn’t like it.

I haven’t complained about it much this season though as I’ve come to accept it is what it is. Though I’ve had issues and after 3 seasons there was never an app made available to me, I have just been happy to be able to watch the games which at the moment is uncertain beyond this season.

@JD would be interesting to know if the number of subscribers have multiple people sharing it

Likely there would be a few. I shared with 2 others.

Got an email from spark saying lightbox was free from now on for spark customers, be great if lightbox sports is added on even without the premier league I'd love to get some other leagues that are likely cheap and aren't shown by sky, like SPL (or actually Scottish Championship because I follow Hibs), Championship, La Liga, Serie A, etc.

You're

I am going ti miss my first cup final since 1973 as I dont have sky sports and am working Night shift that night/morning. With all the fudge around of the last 3 years with Sky etc, it has been killing the enthusiasm with the ridiculous pricing. Sky still are under the delusion that Rugby has dropped their revenue. 

I suggest their pricing and their shark customer service would be more responsible. If Sky sports and Sky movies were only $10 per month, they would win hands down, but they wont. Some guy on stuff added it all up and if you wanted everything Sky offers, except the pay per view bit, it would cost you just over $200 per month.

But still the ignorant cnuts that run Sky and have their nose so far up Rugbys arse will not see what the reality is.

Getting quite a bit of news time in the MSM now

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/7981791...

Only just saw this but this is also where Fanpass fails for me. Surely on demand is a minimum requirement for a streaming service. I know people tend to watch sport live more than they do general TV, but due to time differences, kick off times, work schedules etc it's not always possible so on demand needs to be provided too. For something like CL, I can only really watch live during the portion of the season where our time difference to the UK is 11 hours so games kickoff at 6.45am here and even then I probably need to leave for work before the end so would record the rest.

It's perfect for the domestic event at prime time on a Friday or Saturday night but for European stuff it's not always easy to watch live.

Agreed. What other company would get away with saying "We are a premium service. For which you should pay despite being able to access for free elsewhere. And which is only available between the hours of 2am and 4am on a Monday morning. Now please give us your money!"

Personally I would like to thank PLP for the service over the last 3 years. I didn't really have too many issues at all and once they got past teething issues (posting scores, streaming quality) it worked well for me. I am concerned about where to watch next season, although supporting Newcastle means I need to find a championship service. Can get BBC iplayer at home so maybe match of the day highlights? 

Have we got confirmation of what exactly is happening next year? Someone told me that Sky has got it but I can't find that confirmed anywhere. And this site is my source of all news too and I can't see it. 

Thanks

This (except the Newcastle part).

Still no news, only that Bein have got it and are reportedly trying to sell it.

Pass the hat round lads, I'd tip in a cheeky hundy.

Most people are assuming they'll flog it to Sky given the existing relationship between them for the Champs League football, but still no actual idea at this point. 

sky may actually be happy with their club channel arrangement. But am sure they'd pick it up if it were made available to them for next to nothing. Even just for the PR. 

Yeah I expect Sky will eventually do a last minute cut price deal when Bein decide they are better off getting something for it that writing the whole thing off completely.

Haha yep. The cost of their "look we got it back" marketing campaign will probably be more than the rights themselves.

Hope Duke/TVNZ or Lightbox/Spark pick it up... who knows, PLP may even still be in there (admittedly unlikely).

I don't know if this has been covered already but the rights tripled from the last time they were sold - figures I heard were 3mil for 3 season when PLP brought the rights - this time around BEIN spent 10mil for 3 seasons (but they thought they were the Australasian rights) - now I don't care who you are - try and make money from the premier league in this market with that upfront cost..  Pardon me if I say the real enemy here for the average EPL fan is either the EPL themselves or the middleman who brought the NZ rights and on-sold them - those figures are insane.

The rights are worth what someone will pay for them, like most things on the open market.

It is hilarious that they thought it was the Australasian rights. Does mean you can't really take that 10mill figure seriously as a market value for the NZ rights, because it was obviously bid for in error. 

I'd have thought the EPL was big enough that they could offer a streaming service direct to consumers themselves, then also double up and onsell certain rights to TV broadcasters in different countries too. 

American sports do that very well. They have their own service which people can buy direct, then they on sell about 5 games a week to ESPN in Aus/NZ. Keeps everyone happy. 

Golf seem to be looking to move in this direction also, as they used NZ as a trial for the concept. That tends to have an older audience though, so they may have a bit of trouble with it catching on (and did have trouble in NZ), at least for a few more years yet. 

Wait, what?! Am I reading that right, that Bein accidentally bid $7m more than the rights were (roughly) worth?

EPL disappearing from NZ screens

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c...

So while it currently looks like we may not have legal coverage here, what overseas subscription sites look good? There was a discussion of other services a while back, can anyone remember which ones were suggested?