Reading the Guardian media article in its entirety suggests ESPN will not go directly head to head with sky in the uk for premiership rights or any other a key piece from the guardian media article is this.
Wolff says ESPN is happy for Sky to be the senior partner in the UK. "There will be markets where we bid against each other; there are other territories where we will not. You could have a very good second position in a market if that's the best business model you can build at that time." He adds: "We have a complex, multifaceted relationship with Sky [but] complex relationships aren't new to us. We just have to manage that."
and this.
Senior executives at ESPN emphasise that relations with News Corp and Sky are cordial, pointing out that Sky market ESPN to their subscribers in the UK and that the US network piggy-backs on the Sky platform. ESPN's biggest audience was 917,000, when Manchester United played Tottenham in October last year, but they will not reveal how many customers they have. Syfret estimates the number at 1.2 million, about the same as Setanta. Sky have more than 10 million customers, though not all of them subscribe to their sports channels.
The words senior executives at ESPN emphasise they have cordial relationships with sky as well as the paragraphs i have highlighted above leads me to conclude here at least ESPN will not be trying to outbid sky for anything,but would be prepared to say have a couple of packages of premiership football to keep regulators happy. The current court case though with the pub landlady taking the premiership to the European court for "restrictive practices" ie not being allowed to buy football coverage from anywhere else in europe could change all that in the future .
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pauldavies83
But they can be had for a lot less than that, and you get virtually every premier league & champions league game included live for that price (all with English commentary). Not the 100-odd Sky/ESPN pick.
I'd quite happily pay for one of those cards/dishes rather than pay for Sky Sports with Sky, as I don't watch anything but football and you don't have to buy all the entertainment channels just to get access to the Sports like you do with Sky.
A full year of Sky Sports (with Sky) costs minimum £477 + installation. For someone who just wants the football, not Sky1, not any of the other guff they make you buy just to get the sports channels, and not any of the other sport they show on their sports channels, it's a pretty big rip off compared to the shady alternatives.
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It works both ways you know i only watch the cricket on sky sports but have to pay for hours and hours of football to get it.!
