[harry_hitch]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

The most interesting passage of the Guardian article was:

In a sign of how telecoms and content are converging, it is thought Virgin and Sky have traded football for fibre-optic cables.

Virgin announced Wednesday that it had struck a deal to rent its fibre 'backhaul' to the satellite group, helping carry internet traffic across its core network, although not as far as customers' homes, for which Sky still relies on BT.

"I find it unbelievable that Virgin won't have a deal with Sky on the sports because they've just done a deal on backhaul and they'll all be connected," said Toby Syfret at Enders Analysis. "There is a better and better relationship between them helped by the aggressive stance taken by BT which it feels it has to attack Sky directly in the content area."

This indicates that there is indeed a link between channel and non-channel deals between Sky and VM. For some reason, there was a view expressed on this forum that the fibre optic deal had nothing to do with channels. I would have thought that the two companies do not have such a blinkered approach, which is good for us!

The other significant passage was this:

By contrast, BT is struggling to agree terms to carry Sky's two main sports channels on its flagship YouView service.

The telecoms group is mounting the biggest challenge yet to Sky's dominance in football by paying the Premier League £738m to show 38 Premier League matches a year for the next three years, and will launch its own sports channels this summer.

BT has a deal until 2016 to carry Sky Sports 1 and 2 on its BT Vision box, but that service is being phased out in favour of YouView.

Now to my mind, Sky is playing a very dangerous game because if it is denying BT access to its premium sports channels, this will make BT even more determined to get the lion's share of the Premiership rights next time around. Sky can't afford to be this obstructive.

I don't wish to rain on your parade too much OB, but that article is from 2013 and they are only publishing the views of analyst who (I am guessing) has very little to do with Sky or VM. IMHO, if a deal for channels, content or pricing had been signed with this deal, we would have seen the benefit of it by now.