Premier League own TV channel

[Mate]

I’d cancel Sky tomorrow if they lost PL football and I’d imagine 90% others would do the same. The only other sport I watch seriously on Sky is F1.

Maybe then we could have a platform that doesn't consist of ex-United, Liverpool and Arsenal players!

 

[coys200]

Imagine if it did happen and the PL was getting £10bn a season instead of the £2.5bn now. Wonder how that would translate on the pitch. Would surely even everything out. Clubs like Burnley getting £500m a season ?

 

[Tottenhamboy85]

Btw BT sports app now works on Samsung smart TVs

 

[KILLA_SIN]

Is Bt sport available on xbox etc if you get it free with EE contract or only to paid subscribers

 

['O Zio]

Then it's pointless really. It's a short term solution that prob wont last. Sky is expensive but what you get is a excellent product.

Sky Sports is an absolutely terrible product. Their coverage is a god-awful old boys club of mostly clueless pundits mouthing off about players they've never even heard of and showing up to work on a Saturday having done no reasearch other than skim-read the headlines in the Sun on the way in. The only reason people put up with it is because mostly they're not there to listen to the pundits, they just want to watch the match.

Which leads me to my next point, you can't even watch the matches you want to watch. You pay this eye-watering amount of money to them every month so you can watch your team play, but actually you get access to watch less than half of your teams games depending on who you support. I haven't got the numbers but if, say, you're a Huddersfield fan, how many Huddersfield games do you get to watch on Sky Sports? Hardly any. There are probably some months where you don't even get a single game, but you still have to keep faithfully paying your subscription to Sky because you're locked in.

Sky Sports is terrible as a product and one of the reasons they're struggling so much. If they lost the PL rights it would be a matter of time before they went bust IMO.

 

[Tottenhamboy85]

Is Bt sport available on xbox etc if you get it free with EE contract or only to paid subscribers

https://sport.bt.com/news/watch-bt-...-tv-with-new-large-screen-app-S11364334308554

 

[KILLA_SIN]

Sky Sports is an absolutely terrible product. Their coverage is a god-awful old boys club of mostly clueless pundits mouthing off about players they've never even heard of and showing up to work on a Saturday having done no reasearch other than skim-read the headlines in the Sun on the way in. The only reason people put up with it is because mostly they're not there to listen to the pundits, they just want to watch the match.

Which leads me to my next point, you can't even watch the matches you want to watch. You pay this eye-watering amount of money to them every month so you can watch your team play, but actually you get access to watch less than half of your teams games depending on who you support. I haven't got the numbers but if, say, you're a Huddersfield fan, how many Huddersfield games do you get to watch on Sky Sports? Hardly any. There are probably some months where you don't even get a single game, but you still have to keep faithfully paying your subscription to Sky because you're locked in.

Sky Sports is terrible as a product and one of the reasons they're struggling so much. If they lost the PL rights it would be a matter of time before they went bust IMO.

Was talking about Sky overall no Sports

 

[Rocksuperstar]

I would guess that it's down to effort v reward. Right now they are being paid simply to exist and to allow other companies to broadcast. They don't need to worry about anything really outside of the walls of the stadium. Pundits, studios, graphics, post production, distribution - they're basically letting the broadcasters worry about that and it works out because they already have all of the facilities in place, can source staff in no time and are already broadcasting to millions of subscribers.

If the PL wanted to own it then they would have a big initial shelling out to get all of the necessary in place, they'll be competing against the established Sky, BT Sport, etc. for pundits (especially if they wanted exclusivity), studio space, all of the equipment and staff for post - it would be a huge investment and, imo, a big risk.

Yes, they would get the football fans subscribing but they wouldn't get the casuals who watch the sports channels for other sports. There's also the fact that when a team drops out of the premier league their fans go with them (I expect), where currently they would keep the subscription as it covers so many other channels.

Big risk for them, it would take a shit-ton of research and public consultation to decide if that was worth it. For now, I expect they are happy to let the various broadcasters keep doing what they are doing and cashing the cheques.

 

['O Zio]

I would guess that it's down to effort v reward. Right now they are being paid simply to exist and to allow other companies to broadcast. They don't need to worry about anything really outside of the walls of the stadium. Pundits, studios, graphics, post production, distribution - they're basically letting the broadcasters worry about that and it works out because they already have all of the facilities in place, can source staff in no time and are already broadcasting to millions of subscribers.

If the PL wanted to own it then they would have a big initial shelling out to get all of the necessary in place, they'll be competing against the established Sky, BT Sport, etc. for pundits (especially if they wanted exclusivity), studio space, all of the equipment and staff for post - it would be a huge investment and, imo, a big risk.

Yes, they would get the football fans subscribing but they wouldn't get the casuals who watch the sports channels for other sports. There's also the fact that when a team drops out of the premier league their fans go with them (I expect), where currently they would keep the subscription as it covers so many other channels.

Big risk for them, it would take a shit-ton of research and public consultation to decide if that was worth it. For now, I expect they are happy to let the various broadcasters keep doing what they are doing and cashing the cheques.

I think you're probably right in terms of the effort, but wrong about the reasons. I think they don't do it is because of the hassle of running a subscription service, rather than it being the hassle of producing the content because they do have pundits, studios etc. already. They produce a lot of their own content that they then sell to broadcasters in other countries who can just pay a fee to broadcast the PL's own content rather than have to produce their own. We don't see it in the UK because Sky and BT have the rights and want to produce their own content, but the PL already has plenty of their own stuff so it really wouldn't be that much effort for them to just broadcast their own stuff here instead given that they already produce it.

 

[Gb160]

Netflix innit. Jobs a goodun

Or amazon or YouTube would fight to do it I’m sure

New world

Don't get me wrong, Id love to see it.
A partnership with one of the already established streaming services would be the most likely imo.

 

['O Zio]

Was talking about Sky overall no Sports

OK, but in a discussion about premier league TV rights then it's completely irrelevant whether you like their movie channels or not to be honest...

 

[Gb160]

Dunno what this but IPTV is a group that you subscribe to that has all the channels world wide. So you get to watch all the sports etc

It’s not exactly legal though

Edit: it’s not something rob would like talking about on here

Its not even slightly legal, its piracy....and the PL are losing a hell of a lot of money because of it.
Realistically they could pretty much kill dodgy IPTV overnight by setting up a reasonably priced, watch every game, streamable package...although that'll require a change in the law in the UK to allow the broadcast of 3PM Saturday matches.

 

[Rocksuperstar]

I think you're probably right in terms of the effort, but wrong about the reasons. I think they don't do it is because of the hassle of running a subscription service, rather than it being the hassle of producing the content because they do have pundits, studios etc. already. They produce a lot of their own content that they then sell to broadcasters in other countries who can just pay a fee to broadcast the PL's own content rather than have to produce their own. We don't see it in the UK because Sky and BT have the rights and want to produce their own content, but the PL already has plenty of their own stuff so it really wouldn't be that much effort for them to just broadcast their own stuff here instead given that they already produce it.

Hadn't even thought of the subs themselves, good point.

I can just imagine the idea being bandied about a board room and a lot of silence then one person saying, "It'll be a massive bloody job... is it worth it right now?" and figuring that the extra few million it might bring in can probably be scraped elsewhere for less work.

 

[TheChosenOne]

I'll vote for anything that puts Martin "and it's live" Tyler out of the picture. Especially if Smiffy goes too.

 

[TheChosenOne]

Its not even slightly legal, its piracy....and the PL are losing a hell of a lot of money because of it.
Realistically they could pretty much kill dodgy IPTV overnight by setting up a reasonably priced, watch every game, streamable package...although that'll require a change in the law in the UK to allow the broadcast of 3PM Saturday matches.

Spoilt here with those 3pm live Irish ones, sometimes they are good but not always.
.
The atmosphere created by the commentary team always seems detached - as if they are in a studio in London watching a live feed.

 

[Tottenhamboy85]

Its not even slightly legal, its piracy....and the PL are losing a hell of a lot of money because of it.
Realistically they could pretty much kill dodgy IPTV overnight by setting up a reasonably priced, watch every game, streamable package...although that'll require a change in the law in the UK to allow the broadcast of 3PM Saturday matches.

Spot on

 

[WalkerboyUK]

Its not even slightly legal, its piracy....and the PL are losing a hell of a lot of money because of it.
Realistically they could pretty much kill dodgy IPTV overnight by setting up a reasonably priced, watch every game, streamable package...although that'll require a change in the law in the UK to allow the broadcast of 3PM Saturday matches.

The PL aren't losing money, they just aren't making as much as the fat cats would like.
Don't blame the public for that though, blame players and their agents for wanting 100+k per week at a bottom 5 team.

I watch all our games via IPTV, but that's about it. Very rarely do I watch any other games because I'm just not interested.
Sky aren't losing out as we cancelled our contract 5 or so years ago because we didn't watch enough to justify the cost.
Spurs aren't losing out because I wasn't going to the games before I used IPTV.

I'd happily paid £10-15 per month for a dedicated legal Spurs match channel...

 

['O Zio]

Hadn't even thought of the subs themselves, good point.

I can just imagine the idea being bandied about a board room and a lot of silence then one person saying, "It'll be a massive bloody job... is it worth it right now?" and figuring that the extra few million it might bring in can probably be scraped elsewhere for less work.

Exactly. I just think ultimately while Sky are prepared to keep paying them crazier and crazier money every few years they're more than happy to just sit there watching the money roll in. The interesting thing will be when the bubble does finally burst. We're already seeing Sky and BT Sports starting to lose subscribers because in order to cover the cost of the spiralling rights deals they're paying, they're having to squeeze more and more money out of their customers, who are increasingly deciding that it's just not worth it any more.

Eventually I think it'll get to the point where Sky/BT etc. just can't pay that kind of money for the rights any more because they won't make the money back from subscribers without raising the subscription cost to an even more unsustainable level. It's at that point that I think the PL would start to consider doing it themselves and offering some sort of club-specific subscription where you pay a fee to get every PL game of your club.

The problem with that then would be that it would only be a matter of time until Man Utd etc. turned around and demanded a bigger slice of the TV money because their games were attracting 10m subsribers while Burnley were only attracting 100k or whatever. If that were to happen then the gap between the big clubs and the rest would become even worse than it is currently.

 

['O Zio]

Its not even slightly legal, its piracy....and the PL are losing a hell of a lot of money because of it.
Realistically they could pretty much kill dodgy IPTV overnight by setting up a reasonably priced, watch every game, streamable package...although that'll require a change in the law in the UK to allow the broadcast of 3PM Saturday matches.

The trouble is they're currently offering a poor product for a high price, which is encouraging people to look for other means to get what they want. As you say they could kill the streaming thing overnight if they just offered a reasonably priced team-specific package. I think the overwhelming majority of people would rather pay e.g. 20/30 quid a month to get access to all of their team's games rather than have to faff about with dodgy streaming services.

 

[Gb160]

The PL aren't losing money, they just aren't making as much as the fat cats would like.
Don't blame the public for that though, blame players and their agents for wanting 100+k per week at a bottom 5 team.

They are losing money, subscriptions are down because people are finding cheaper, illegal ways to watch the content.
How can you blame players and agents?...they're only being paid what clubs are prepared to pay them.