Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

It is true that most sport is not delivered by way of streaming yet in the UK, but it is only a matter of time. As I have said many times, we need to get our broadband infrastructure rolled out in this country before streaming takes off.

Clearly, serious bids for the Premier league cannot happen until we have sufficient infrastructure, but if the Government is to be believed, most of this will have taken place by the next bidding round. To imagine that the likes of Amazon cannot compete with the smaller pockets of Sky is ridiculous, frankly.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

Yet again you are wrong.

Premiership Football is delivered over satellite , cable , IPTV and streamed through the likes of Virgin TV Anywhere , Sky Go and the BT Sport app.

Streaming is nothing new it's already being done.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

Well, I know that, but we are talking about sport being provided by one of the big streaming companies as the sole means of distribution. That's what Den is railing about. But you know that, right?

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

It's nothing to do with the complexities of streaming it's about business models.

Amazon include Prime video as one of many incentives to entice people to take an annual Prime subscription. There is not a chance in the world that they'll pay the billions Sky does just for rights in the UK.

It only captured games this time because nobody else deemed the packages worth meeting the reserve price.

If Amazon really wanted to it could blow Netflix content spend on TV shows out the water however they don't why is that ?

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

It's about business models, technical issues with streaming such as latency and broadband coverage.

The fact that Amazon did not think the time was right in the last round of Premiership bidding does not mean they will never make a serious bid. It may not be Amazon, of course. It might be Disney or one of the other big players out there.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

Disney owns ESPN and well where are they now in the British sports rights market?

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

To be fair, Amazon, Netflix or someone else will probably fight against Sky and bid for football rights. It might not happen now or even in 5 years time, but I think it will come. It's such a lucrative market not to be apart of.

Sky/Virgin and other tv companies are probably lucky that these huge, mega rich streaming companies do not bid sooner. I'd certainly consider my Virgin package if the football wasn't included. Having both Amazon & Netflix subscriptions inc the football would probably still be a lot less than I am paying now.

Afterall, when Sky lost La Liga rights, it showed us that they are not as powerful as they once were. I can't imagine BT wanting to give up the Champions League/Europa League rights back to them too easily either.

The premier league and football league certainly wouldn't care who bought the rights, as long as they get their money.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

Can someone do the calculations on how Netflix/Amazon etc return a profit to cover the costs of £1.5bn a year for UK Premiership rights? Until then I’m bored of hearing about it.

Similarly the end of linear TV can someone do calculations for the point it ceases to be effective for a major rights holder (Sky) to cease linear in favour of a 100% streaming solution. Bear in mind bandwidth is so cheap Sky broadcast the movie Groundhog Day fourteen times in succession on February 2nd/3rd and hundreds of channels broadcast to tiny audiences.

Without either of these meaningful calculations it’s baseless speculation.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

That proves nothing, of course, Den.

---------- Post added at 09:57 ---------- Previous post was at 09:50 ----------

Do the calculations? How do you suppose we do that? Even if we had detailed costs to hand of existing operations, whether something is profitable or not depends on your strategy. It would not surprise me if there were loss leading initiatives in the minds of some streaming companies.

Forecasts are always speculation to some extent, but this one is hardly baseless. If you keep a close eye on everything that's happening out there as well as viewing trends, it is pretty obvious how this is all going to pan out.

If you were standing on a railway line, would you remain there if you saw a train in the distance on the basis that it would never hit you because it was too far away? Of course not, and just because sports streaming hasn't yet taken off in the UK doesn't mean that it never will.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

I’ve never disputed that streaming will take off. It is you that’s projecting the binary future that streaming and linear TV are mutually exclusive, and that streaming is some kind of revolution rather than an evolution of content delivery.

Sky/Comcast presently deliver their sports offering through streaming on Now TV, TV from Sky on PlayStation/Xbox apps and Sky Go.

It’s quite easy to do the calculations really. Netflix charge £8 per month. If we ignore other additional costs for now £1.5bn. To solely recover this cost they would need 15 625 000 individual subscribers and haven’t yet covered the rest of their costs (and tax obligations) let alone made a penny profit on their investment. Incidentally with the two screen package that’s enough Netflix for one device in every single household in the United Kingdom.

Your railway analogy is meaningless. More appropriate would be the question would I remain on the line if I knew the train would run out of diesel before it hit me. In that case I would.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

Changes to UKTV are getting closer:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...-darren-childs

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

I don't think Sky 'lost' La Liga - they rightly didn't bid high as it wasn't a priority for them, hence Eleven Sports won the bidding.

Amazon and Netflix are bound to significantly increase their subs if they capture Premiership Football rights, unless they do it as a loss leader - however I can't see that happening as they seem to have no trouble getting new subscribers without Sporting rights.

Personally I think they will stick mainly to what they currently do, only adding the odd sporting coverage when they can pick up a bargain.

Additionally streaming sports will rely on widespread high speed broadband coverage - whilst this has been promised, there is no firm date for everyone to have this and no signs of it happening in the near future. In fact the promise of high speed broadband on trains has recently been reneged on.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

What if it's an electric train? :D:D:angel:

Netflix have nearly 150m subscribers worldwide raking in over $15bn in revenue a year. They could afford it if they wanted too. Maybe there is a little more too it than just buying the rights.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

I’m quite sure many media companies could leverage existing assets in order to fund the rights. However nobody is going to sacrifice profits without an underlying business model to monetise the rights and see a return on investment. At £1.5bn a year risk the return would have to be substantial.

I could sell my house and afford more luxurious things than I ordinarily could. That doesn’t make me necessarily wealthier in the long run.

Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2019)
 

I agree with Raider999, I don't think Sky lost La Liga. Same way they didn't lose ATP Tennis. They've only got so much space to fill, existing rights get more expensive and certain sports have inconvenience scheduling, they either clash with higher rating events or take too much time to show. They also need to give the illusion of variety, so they can't just show football.

BT Sport is the same. It's juggling budget, audience perception and scheduling. Eurosport takes a different approach, it predominantly shows sports that take large chunks of schedule to do properly, hence cycling, tennis and snooker.

Notice how Sky sponsored a pro cycling team for years but never showed an interest in broadcasting it. There are a lot of events and they can take many hours to even show just one. Sky knew they didn't have the space to schedule it and the audience wasn't necessarily big enough to justify a dedicated channel (remember the Bike channel that existed but folded in recent years).

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Sorry for going off thread topic.

Still no sign of the STV HD 103 switch. Guess either the information was wrong, or it was postponed due to technical difficulties.

I suspect if Discovery end up with the 3 channels mentioned in that article they will end up closing them, or their own channels with similar subject matter.