Quote:
Originally Posted by Horizon
I know, I know... it's premium sports and films that drive subscription numbers, not the order of channels. But I expect that is what may lie behind this numbering decision, though.
VM may think that having the "in the clear" Sky Sports News channel in such a prominent position on the EPG may drive new Sky Sports subscriptions. What other reasons can they have for putting a minority channel right in front of the premium channels?
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Traditionally, VM made nothing on the Sky Premium channels and might even have made a loss. They are only there to aid channel parity with (mainly) Sky to try and drive TV customer growth for the channels that do make the company money.
This is why, despite them being made available, VM never used to advertise the Sky premiums.
However, things appear to have changed. VM now advertise the Sky premium channels on their barker channels and VM now participate in the free promotional dates for Sky Sports channels at the same times as Sky customers.
The remaining HD sport channels have been made available to VM and the season ticket is good value. Considering that this is less than what Skys own customers pay (and that VM make nothing on these channels) I am assuming that Sky are subsidising this in some way.
The % of customers on VM who take Sky Sports is much lower than on Skys own platform, so there is a potential for growth to help offset the expected subscriber cancellations. Even if this requires promotional pricing, a discounted subscription is better than nothing. I'm really surprised that VM customers who buy the season ticket aren't tied into another 18-24 contract though.
All this leads me to believe that Sky are now using VM both in their battle against their competitors and to negate the expected loss of subscribers/revenue after the loss of sports rights.
---------- Post added at 18:16 ---------- Previous post was at 18:12 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by denphone
A lot of customers watch Sky Sports News and Sky advertise their sports channels all the time on there so by putting it at 501 they believe it will attract people to subscribe to the Sky Sports premium channels one suspects.
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As per my comments above, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Sky had a lot of influence on these new EPG positions (or even made it part of the contractual carriage agreement).