Umm all those programs were until the spat last year available to Virgin Media customers, and Sky Sports is available to any broadcaster that wants it as it's part of the rate card?
Have you used Sky recently? It's great, it does cool stuff like not taking ages to change channels and has a fast and responsive EPG, you can actually surf the channels without spending about 3 weeks over it. Red button works and is fast doing it, how cool is that?
Virgin's EPG is atrocious, Virgin's STB software is atrocious, you can see where Virgin have been multiplexing streams to cram as much as possible onto the network as picture quality on various channels is noticeably poorer, and I am looking forward to getting back to Sky. About the only thing I'll even consider missing from VM TV is VoD and even that was substandard with pixellation on various programmes and subtitles missing on BBCi.
Anyway that's my opinion, along with my explanation why. Virgin's TV is a poor relation to Sky in every way apart from having VoD in my opinion. Nothing at all to do with cost or where the cricket, which is also available on VMTV, is broadcast. If people didn't pay the prices Sky wouldn't charge them, so while your friend might not be able to afford them, which is unfortunate, clearly on the whole the product does sell at those prices.
EDIT: Incidentally Sky don't even decide what they charge Virgin Media, et al, for Sky Sports and Sky Movies, Ofcom do. Perhaps you should complain to them about the prices.