Quote:
Originally Posted by cityfan247
i subscribed to NASN when it started and have had ESPN America when it started up. I paid £10 pm back then but times have changed- it is not the only way to watch North American Sport anymore.
having had a channel for free to then expect people to pay for it will be difficult. Cant see many paying £10 on these days.
Personally even £5 pm might see my stop subscribing. Losing the NFL & NHL rights last year was a BIG disappointment for me. I subscribe to MLB.TV these days so can watch ANY MLB game i wish. As much as i like American sports, and i do follow college sports, is college basketball and football (and some MLB) enough to pay for it? probably not. Some questions would need to be answered first.
When ESPN goes will it transfer its NBA programming to ESPN America ? For me it would have to but as SKY has recently struck a deal with the NBA will it still have the rights?
Will ESPN America get any of its NFL programming again? Last Year ESPN lost its Monday Night Football game to BBC- it also stopped broadcasting its pregame ESPN (US) Sunday shows.
ESPN America HD would be absolutely essential to any pay subscription deal.
so no NHL, no NFL, some college sports ,possibly some NBA some MLB, MLS ? lacrosse ? hmmmmmmm.
as i say i would be sad to end my 10 years + watching this channel but it has to worth it.
Whilst having more tv companies showing sports increases competition it is not good new for viewers. How many people can afford to subscribe to Sky Sports, BT Sports and ESPN America (and maybe Premier Sports)? not too many i would say.
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I agree with the comments in your post Cityfan.
In the days of NASN and the first few years of ESPN America, the channel had the entire set of US Sports apart from some NFL and the NFL post season. Since then it has lost its NFL coverage to the BBC and NHL to Premier Sports and shares NBA with Sky so all the channel has exclusively is MLB and the MLB season only lasts for seven months and in recent months the channel has only shown college sports and some second tier ice hockey and as you suggest, virtually nobody would pay extra for ESPN America as it stands right now, not even a fiver a month.
My guess is that it will be part of the three-channel BT Sport package consisting of BT Sport 1, BT Sport 2 and ESPN America and it's unlikely that BT will allow VM to include any of its channels into its XL package although there's a slight chance that they might allow ESPN America to continue in the XL package given that the intention is to retain ESPN America, presumably as it stands now, rather than fold ESPN America into BT Sports.
It will be interesting to see if Premier Sports appears on VM when ESPN stops broadcasting as XL customers right now stand to loose the sporting action that ESPN has provided over the past four years and before then the sport that Setanta used to show, plus also ESPN Classic although that channel was not what it was in the days before it appeared on VM so it's not much of a loss IMO. I somehow don't think that VM will lower the price of the XL package if this happens and overnight VM XL will be far less value than it was before Setanta was added to XL in around 2007.
---------- Post added at 15:54 ---------- Previous post was at 15:48 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by cityfan247
questions-
how many will be able to afford sky & Bt Sports if BT charge say £12pm or even more.?
How many would choose BT over Sky sports if subscribing to only 1? not that money i would say. This is what has caused Setanta and ultimately ESPN to fail.BT have pretty much the same sports line up as ESPN and Setanta before them- they both failed- what makes BT think it wont. Less and less are subscribing to ALL sports packages due to cost and ESPN (and Setanta) have failed to attract enough people from Sky Sports.
i dont know how many actually pay for ESPN on the Sky platform- not enough it would appear. How many VM subscribers would have paid the extra £ if it wasn't part of the XL pack? One would think BT have experts to crunch numbers as to the viability of its Sports operation and the amount of cash they have put into it in terms of how many subcsribers it needs and how much to charge.
perhaps VM will drop its charges if BT isn't included in the XL pack????
is that a pig flying past my window?
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All good points.
As you say, what BT currently has is what ESPN has now plus WTA tennis although I think BT will add to its offering in the months ahead depending on what becomes available between now and August.
My guess is that BT Sports will cost £10-£12 per month but it will be interesting to see how much it costs for BT Vision customers.
I for one would not have paid for ESPN if it had not been in the XL pack and like you, I see those pigs flying past the window regarding VM dropping the price of XL in August...