Quote:
Originally Posted by denphone
Absolutely as it seems relations between Sky and Virgin are indeed very entente cordiale and whatever poster or posters thought that Virgin would be frozen out by BT and Sky is probably choking on his porridge oats this morning because it very much seems that the odd man out could well be BT.
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Exactly. BT are on the spot, because they have laid out £millions on sports rights which they HAVE to sell to Sky and Virgin customers - their own existing customer base by itself is way too small.
Sky (and to a lesser extent, Virgin) can probably afford to play hardball with BT on a wholesale deal - this probably why the Sky/Virgin deal is only for one year, to see how things pan out.
As a fall-back, BT could presumably use ESPN's EPG slots to market directly to satellite customers, but this too could be very difficult without Sky's co-operation and/or require setting up a whole new billing infrastructure with 3 months to go....