Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardCoulter
Whilst I would love to see Sky squeezed out of the pay movie market (at least), I do wonder if we could see a situation similar to the football contracts. ie competition that was intended to help the consumer has led to a fragmentation of sports rights and an overall increase for the customer to obtain the same amount of sport.
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It could have the same effect, but I think it will be slightly different for the movies. I will try and explain my thinking, and I hope everyone can follow my train of thought. For example, I can't justify Sky Movies, but I can justify £10 per month for a trip to Blockbuster to rent 4 movies for 4 nights. (some people may pay £10 for Lovefilm/Blockbuster.com as an alternative.) That way I get to choose what movies (mainly new releases I did not see at the cinema) I want to watch, when I want. I could also squeeze an extra £6 a month for Netflix (if it is not bundled in to XL) from somewhere and have much more content than I would need.
On this basis, my (and possibly others) extra spend will only be £6.
Also customers who have Sky movies will have the option of cancelling the movies and picking up 2/3/4 different subscriptions from (Netflix/lovefilm/wuaki etc) for the same price, but with much more additional T.V. content for a similar price.
For me this is unlike the sports where people have to pay a certain price if they want to watch a sport live. Also, there is no real compettion for Sky in terms of sports. It is only really BT at the moment, unlike movie providers.
Ultimately if bidding wars for movie "rental" rights get too high, I will simply use the cinema and buy DVD/Bluray's from the shops. An option we simply will never from live sports on TV.