Quote:
Originally Posted by passingbat
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.
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I think over the years SKY and Virgin have been the best of enemies. When I was a Virgin customer it was great when SKY Sports in HD became an option, it was great when the red button launched and it was great when SKY Movies and SKY Sports on demand launched. I think SKY and Virgin will still be able to come to an amicable arrangement.
BT and SKY on the other hand is a different animal all together. SKY see BT as a direct threat to their business, especially their sports customers. I would not be surprised at all if SKY try to price BT out of a wholesale carriage deal. Saying that thought if SKY set a high price for the channels to BT, they will probably have to set the same price for Virgin, Talk Talk etc...
I feel sorry for the consumer here. It will be the consumer that suffers. My Dad is 64 years old and loves watching the football. I got him over to Virgin from SKY about 5 years ago so he could enjoy Setanta Sports in the XL package. I told my Dad recently that he would lose ESPN soon and he might have to pay extra for BT Sports. If SKY jack the price of SKY Sports up in the summer, and Virgin do agree a new deal, Virgin will have to pass the price onto their customers. Come August my Dad could be paying anywhere between £12 to £18 more than he currently does to essentially watch the same thing.