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Originally Posted by Media Boy
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Everyone's saying BT will make losses on the Sport side of things.
However, they probably expect to for the first few years, and as others have said, prob hope to take more rights and end up in a 50/50 style share situation with Sky (which would result in BT surely then charging, and presumably sky having to lower their prices)
But if BT get a good increase in viewers, which is likely, as they have 5m Broadband subscribers now, plus the inevitable people they entice, plus those who subscribe who used to have ESPN.
It is logical to predict they will have more viewers than Sky Sports. They could therefore market the advertising slots very competitively and charge more than if they had subscribers paying.
Say they had 1.5m paying £15 that's £22.5m BT is paying £246m per season. Subscriptions wouldn't even scrap the surface anyway.
BT made a profit of £675m last year.
They're not eating into that too much are they?
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So you think BT are just starting up Three Sports Channels just to stop the VAT man from getting it?   |
No. Just pointing out that people who are saying that BT somehow can't afford to offer their channels cheaply are wrong.
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Originally Posted by muppetman11
I'm sure I read that Sky has around 6 million Sky Sports subscribers on its own platform and VM has around 700,000 , they also sell to Talk Talk , Smallworld , BT , UPC Ireland so I realistically can't see BT beating Sky Sports viewing figures. How many of their 5 million BB subscribers will have no interest in sport at all or be without BT TV or Sky TV.
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Sky's record viewing figure was the Manchester Derby last year which peaked at 4.4m. with an average of 4m.
However, they average around 2m viewers per game, some games only 1.5m.
11m peak watched last years FA Cup final on ITV.
United's 2nd leg defeat to Real Madrid averaged 9m.
The point I was trying to make was pretty simple.
If you assume that there are the 6m Sky Sports subscribers, of which on average only 2m ever tune in to watch a game.
And there are 5m BT Broadband subscribers.
It's also sensible to assume that whilst some Sky subscribers may have BT broadband, a lot with have Sky Broadband.
Therefore, you have a hefty chunk of 5m BT subscribers now having access to BT sport channels for free.
You will also get some who move from Sky to BT for BB.
And also some who stay at Sky for BB but still sign up to BT Sport.
So you have BT Sport that will become accessible to at least 5m BT BB users, plus a chunk of the 6m who subscribe to Sky Sports.
Basically, you can envisage BT's matches being available to a wider audience than Sky Sports.
I included ITV's figures because that highlights how people want to watch football but don't want to pay, therefore it's very probable that there's people with BT BB who don't want to pay for sport, but will want to tune in when it's offered to them for free.
If it does bear out that there are higher viewing figures, then BT can extract greater advertising revenue and thereby negate the need to charge.
I highlighted BT's revenue to show that they would only generate in the mid £20m by charging everyone which doesn't cover 10% of the costs of acquiring the rights (let alone paying for "talent").
ie. They're better off trying to get as many people watching as possible and make money out of the advertisements as advertising generates far greater revenue than subscriptions.