Quote:
Originally Posted by Chad
The thing is none of SKY's current customers would probably care one bit if the channels are withdrawn, by hook or by crook, from BT and Virgin. SKY wouldn't care too much either as it would give them the chance to add a significant numbers of new subscribers at record sign up rates.
I seriously think we are about to see a bit of history repeating. In February 2007 Virgin Media launched which some suggested would shake the British pay TV market and become serious competition to SKY. Within weeks all SKY basic channels were withdrawn from the Virgin platform. This is viewed by many as SKY trying to stick the boot into Virgin right at their birth.
Within the next few months it looks like Liberty Global will enter the UK pay TV market by taking over Virgin whilst BT are set to launch a brand new TV service including BT Sports. I can see SKY repeating their "put the boot in at birth" exercise to both BT and Liberty Global but this time with SKY Sports. Just like in 2007 with Virgin, the mudslinging between BT and SKY has started in the press already.
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All the above is possible.
One thing I noticed when the Liberty takeover was announced, was that the head of Liberty specifically said that they had no intention of going into the Premium content acquisition market.
I think that may have been a message to Sky, that Liberty are leaving Sky's prime money making business alone, but the unsaid, but implied reciprocal requirement from Sky was that they would not try to withhold premium content from VM or that could change. I could be wrong and may have read into that something that wasn't there.