Quote:
Originally Posted by denphone
Well with the ECL , EL , FA Cup and several other big leagues plus some PL they are becoming a reasonable priced alternative to Sky Sports pricey premium packages.
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Very good point. A couple of other Saturday morning points:
I do laugh when I see people complaining that the now have to pay two providers to see "all the football" by which they mean the Premier League. For starters, most Sky Sports subscribers can only watch a fraction of the matches it broadcasts as there just isn't time. Secondly, in the glory days they hark back to, there were far fewer Premier League matches being shown. Up until 2001, just 60 matches were being shown by Sky. In 2001, that figure rose to 110 matches.
There are now some 168 matches being shown and viewers have the choice of taking 42 matches from BT and 126 matches from Sky.
I also laugh when I see people complaining about the regulators requiring matches to be sold to two broadcasters. It is the regulators that did not allow BT to enter the pay TV market until 2001 which it did five years later. If BT had not been banned from providing pay TV services by the regulators, it may well have been bidding for Premier League rights back in the 90s! So I argue that having just one bidder for Premier League rights was in fact a temporary situation created by the regulators.