Exclusive TV rights.
 

Does no one else agree that making exclusive rights for TV content illegal would solve and content problems over night, and also result in the consumer paying less due to genuine choice.


If no one could buy e3xclusive football rights then the auctions would be finished and set prices, or prices per customer would come in. Much better for us the consumer. It would also save £millions in stupid "investigations" that solve nothing.

So surely people should stop pressuring OFCOM to focus on Sky and point them to content rights owners and prevent them from having exclusive contracts. If the EPL wasn't so greedy they would let all TV channels buy all packs so all games were on several channels.

Its so obvious but everyone finds it easier to point everything at Sky forgetting content owners could quite easily let everyone have their content.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

Don't think you will find many people around here agreeing on that. The only thing keeping SKY in check is OFCOM

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

You've missed my point, if Sky didnt have exclusive content OFCOM wouldn't need to keep them in check. Everyone could buy all content and price it accordingly. So say the EPL price football at £10 per viewer, then VM go to the EPL and pay them £10 per viewer. No exclusive football on Sky..clear enough?

Why is it so endemic in VM customers and Staff that everything must involve Sky. Just ban exclusive contract and cut Sky out of your negotiations. Go straight to the content providers create your own channels.

If people here could take of the blinkered glassess and see what I'm actually trying to say they would see its a great point.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

I try not to get involved in the bickering that happens on here from time to time, but I do read most of it (in frustration) and I have to be honest and say this is possibly the most sensible thing I have seen you post. The problem being, SKY can and will pay for exclusive rights just because they can. It is just pure greed and a massive abuse of power from a certain unnamed media mogul. It is now well known how many prime ministers they have controlled and this will never be made illegal whilst Murdoch owns/runs SKY.

EPL only ask for lots of money because they know SKY will pay for it. If SKY stopped bidding for it, the price would drop MASSIVELY. Sky will continue to pay loads though, because they know they will make much more profit from the consumer! Again, if everyone who has sports stopped paying SKY for their sports, all the prices would drop too!!

I strongly agree with your point though, never has it been more relevant that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and whilst businesses can fleece us for content at inflated prices, they will continue to do so.

Sad times:mad::(

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

In an ideal world that would be a great solution.

Every TV platform has access to the same rights for the same price. So for example HBO sell their rights to Virgin, SKY and BT resulting in each provider launching their own channel to carry the content i.e. Virgin Atlantic, SKY Atlantic and BT Atlantic. All sports rights sold at the same price to all providers so you'd have SKY Sports, Virgin Sports and BT Sports.

As each would have access to the same standard channels, such as the Discovery Channel and ITV, and the same content you should start to see some fantastic innovation from each provider trying to make their service more attractive than the others.

Sadly I can't see it every happening, but in theory it would be great for customers.

Surely it would be more beneficial for content providers to sign non-exclusive deals? SKY are paying HBO £30,000,000 per year for the next 5 years for exclusivity. Surely it would have been better for HBO to sell it's content for say £7,000,000 per year to Talk Talk, BT, SKY, Virgin and Smallworld. This would mean their shows would be seen by millions here in the UK rather than the figures they achieve on SKY Atlantic. It would help boost HBO DVD and Blu-ray sales here in the UK. It's a win for HBO and fans of TV in general. They could even sell the content on to terrestrial TV 12 months after shows have had their UK premier on pay TV netting HBO even more money.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

If OFCOM are seriously here for the benefit of consumers then they would do this, its possible to do.

Sky are not to blame for the greed of the EPL, people need to sit up and direct attention to the content owners. If they want to sell their content in the UK then they can't have exclusive contracts.

They won't pull out of the UK lossing 100's of £millions. It really is a simple fix, do you think SKY want to pay £2billion for football? Or £6.6million per game?

Oh Murdoch niether owns nore runs Sky, by the end of August he won't be the biggest share holder either.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

I've since edited my post. It seems we certainly agree on this in concept.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

Yeah just read your edit, if you had read my original post correctly you wouldn't of needed the edit but never mind.

Anyway if this was to happen the worst case for me is I pay lots less for everything I have now once my great deal finishes, and for you, you would pay the same or less for more. We are consumers and for the first time ever we would win.

Turns out common sense really is not all that common.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

If I'm honest Chad I'd like to be able to buy a cheap streaming box , Roku , Apple TV etc , and buy my content direct from the source ie , HBO , EPL , NFL , Fox etc , at least this way you can purchase what's important to you. Currently you have to subscribe and take packages most of which you'll never watch , the NFL , MLB , NHL and NBA already offer a game pass to watch games live and on demand it would be great if the EPL did the same.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

My point exactly, why should one provider have exclusive rights, just make them illegal. Then we as consumers could choose between many providers.

You would have 3 or 4 broadcast TV providers but maybe 10 or 20 IPTV providers, or like you can get MLB as an app on XBOX.Splitting content to many providers cost the consumer more.

But making all content available to all providers is just an outright excellent idea, so you could have BT-Atlantic, Sky-Atlantic, Virgin-Atlantic, TALKTALK-Atlantic, plus normal channels like the BBC,ITV C4,C5 Etc could offer all content like HBO and EPL.

It could end up that Freview/Freesat actually has some great content and we don't need to have Paytv,,,,,,,,,,,,,I'M ALL FOR THAT!!!!

My Smart TV has loads of apps, no reason why it can't have a EPL app. I don't mind if it's not in HD as long as I get to see it live.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

SKY fully play into the EPL's hands. They both have interests in high EPL contracts as it means plenty of profit for them both. The EPL would be nothing without SKY and SKY would be nothing without the EPL. SKY would pay £2billion if they can make half a billion in profit from, which they most certainly will. The same applies ()albeit to a lesser extent) to the ECB and RFU.

Why would content owners spend time and money thrashing out seperate deals with various companies when SKY just just name a figure and they then make a fortune from SKY and then selling the programmes on itunes etc. I still agree with your point though, I dont agree that SKY, itunes or numerous other companies are blameless though.

Murdoch owns the most shares in SKY and his son makes (or at least made) all the major decisions. One of them makes the decisions that affect exclusivity and they just want to control as much of the media as they can within the law. The sooner they are both kicked out of all our media, the better. The problem is, no goverment will because he "donates" so much to their party.

I must stress again that I still agree with your original point. Alas, as a business, what SKY, HBO and many others do makes perfect sense. Does it help the poor hard up consumer? no it does not.

Lets all form a protest;)

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

So OFCOM enforce a rule where exclusive contracts are banned, that's it no more problem. Every provider has all content no one major player. Why don't OFCOM just do this.

I can then get freesat and have my EPL for free lol. But welldone on managing to whinge about Sky lol.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

Oh dear, back to the trolling. Will rise to this one and this one only. Firstly, what a well thought out reply "well done on managing to whinge about sky" please try better next time you reply. I wont be visiting this thread again, so I guess I will read your rubbish on the other threads. If you read it properly you will see I whinged about a lot of companies (too many to mention)

Why ofcom don't do what you suggest I don't know. I dont think people will begrudge paying good money, as long as its fair and companies dont collude to push their profits up massively and unfairly.

Top league football used to be FTA before SKY and the EPL came along. I think their may be a coincidence there.

Its a shame, you seem to so keen to troll you appear to be dragging down your own thread from what was a pretty salient point.

"laters"

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

Exactly They can, and do, outbid everybody for their content.

Ignoring Sport and Movies for a moment, my main issue with Sky is when they find US import on Terrestrial TV that has been a success and then outbid everyone for the second (and/or more) season.

As if that weren't enough, for any TV shows they buy themselves they always purchase both the PayTV rights and the FTA rights; but then never use the latter. This means that no other channel can ever (for life of contract at least) show it. That's fine because, of course, Sky have PickTV that is FTA don't they? They could show it on there a year or two later, couldn't they? Well yes. They could. But they don't.

Now I'm all for Sky having "first run PayTV rights" if they want them but there is no need to buy the FTA rights and not use them. That's just wrong.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

Who is going to film the sport? Are you suggesting that sky, virginmedia, bt etc. all have their own camera crew at games?

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

F1 have their own camera crew and provide the feeds to everyone else but the individual companies add their own commentators and a camera or two so it could be done but I dont think easily.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

All "race footage" is supplied by F1, the individual companies can only show pre/post race footage via their own cameras.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

Exclusive TV rights aren't necessarily the problem.

Do we really need to go back to the days when BBC, ITV etc all were competing against each other, both covering the same football match but with different commentary teams? Of course if you really loathe the team from one provider swapping to another might be an option, but realistically duplicating coverage just dilutes the value and reduces choice of everyone else to the alternative.

The problem of exclusivity is simply one of price. The highest bidder is the one with deepest pockets. They may well have overvalued their option to get that exclusivity. They then need to offset that, hopefully from their direct advertising and subscriptions. But they also hope they can get similar subscription levels from other providers who might wish to take their content. That is where the problem lies. Other providers may attribute less value, albeit some value, to the rights holder.

What would perhaps separate things is to split transmission network and associated infrastructure from the content provision, even if this is only by a process of chinese walls in the same way that BT wholesale is split from retail. VM is effectively already in such demarcation by having sold it's stakes in channels like Gold and Living. Sky as content provider and distributor in one, perhaps isn't as transparent and perhaps one side of it's offering can offset or add value to the other, to the disadvantage of other networks that might wish to distribute content at an economical cost.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

Well said.

I dont see any issue with content providers being a separate entity from the distributor.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

And in the UK, that's Sky. Game over. (Pun not intended!)

Which is why I agree they need splitting. Good luck in getting them to actually do that though.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

Just been looking on Pick TV and I see , Spartacus Blood and Sand , Strike Back , Star Trek the next generation to name a few so the points highlighted aren't strictly true.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

My thought exactly.

& as most of the shows that are complained about seem to be from the USA
who is going to enforce it.
Sky, you can`t say that is as close as you are going to get.

I sell a number of products them at a high price, or to who knows how many at a lower price - may be. Nice idea unworkable but a nice idea:p:

---------- Post added at 15:54 ---------- Previous post was at 15:53 ----------

:clap:

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

Interesting observation MM. I've criticized Sky for that in the past, so it's good to know some shows are getting a FTA showing and that I was mistaken about the situation. TBH, I don't think that I've ever checked the Pick TV listings, because of having Living and One.

I still find the situation of a couple of Atlantic shows being added to Living and One an interesting and very good development. Let's hope that continues.

---------- Post added at 16:30 ---------- Previous post was at 16:24 ----------

I'm sure that we all agree on that. I think the sad thing is that we all agree that it will never happen.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

Fair enough. Perhaps they're beginning to change.

Re: Exclusive TV rights.
 

Yes usually a leopard usually never changes its spots but perhaps it is suddenly becoming a cuddly teddy bear.;)