Quote:
Originally Posted by Superblade7
Completely agree Chad. In the days when only Sky had the Premiership and other sports rights you had the choice of whether to subscribe to Sky Sports or not. It was a simple choice for the consumer.
However as others have pointed out, since the dawn of Setanta, ESPN and now BT Sport the competition has not really helped the consumer due to the cost increases and the fact that you now have to subscribe to two (or potentially more dependant on your interests) providers instead of just one.
Whilst competition is good for a consumer market, it is only good on comparable products. For example, if I want to buy a coffee, I can choose a local cafe, Starbucks, Costa, etc, and choose which provider I want based on my preferred taste and the price I am willing to pay. But ultimately I can get a coffee from any of them.
However, with sports rights, the fact is that Sky & BT offer completely different products as other than Premiership rights, they both have exclusive deals for the other sports they show. Whilst they keep trying to get one up on the other and pay overinflated prices for football rights it is only going to affect us, the consumer, as realistically there is no competition in this field, only a choice of whether to have none, some or all sports and the more you choose, the more you pay.
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BIB. You still have a choice for a sports provider. You can choose (BT Sports) a cheaper option for a lesser PL service, but which still has plenty of football from other leagues on it, as well as some high quality other sports. You can choose a very expensive service to watch numerous PL games, as well as some other games from other leagues and plenty of other sports too. Or you can simply choose to pay stupid amounts of money for both.
Quite why people (not just Superbalde) feel they are being forced to take both subscriptions is beyond me. You have a choice of two services, you can make a decision to to save money by only taking one of the services. You must know your own financial budgets. If you want both providers and can afford it, why moan? All businesses will charge as much as people are willing to pay. If you can't afford both, pick the one you can afford.
Going back to the coffee analogy, I will add a thought to it. If Starbucks were the only provider of coffee for a number of years and charged a high price because they knew they had a very good product and a customer base who would pay the money required. Suddendly, Cafe Nero come along and offer a slightly different product which is a little less tasty, but still offers a good quality product at a much cheaper price, what would you do? Would you choose one coffee provider or would you buy two coffees to satiate your tastes?
This is only an extreme hyperthetical situation and I have not posted it to stir things up, merely to make a point. I chose coffee as an example as Superblade used that as an example. You could make the argument better with clothes (do you buy a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, or a fat face polo shirt, or do you buy both).
I am aware this will rile a number of posters, but I have not written it cause upset, merely make a point about how daft this whole situation sounds to me. I apologize for offence taken by anyone.