I think the idea sky were shocked is naive. Broadcasting is changing rapidly.
Netflix is already hurting their Movies business.
EPL was an obvious target, given their large number of simultaneous games in the 3pm Sat slot, even a sat broadcaster like Sky is poorly placed to meet this demand.Note that one large rights package to Indonesia, NZ, and the pacific islands was sold, the rights were sub-sold to Coliseum in NZ.
I suspect the wider idea is we are a test market to look at how large market sports rights are sold direct without the bundling of all the other crud on sports channels.
As i have already said - it makes news corp recent exit highly dubious.