[MovedGoalPosts]

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.