Getting rid of Sky Sport 101

Here's an example of where i believe we're heading:

http://www.performgroup.com/news-and-insights/perform-revolutionises-live-sports-with-launch-of-dazn/

Not related to football but some of the typical Sky Sport issues with the Olympics over the last week. Been recording various sessions during the day to watch in the evening and a couple of times the athletics recording has ended while it was still going as it had gone longer than the scheduled time. I know there was a big rain delay with yesterday's evening session but would still expect them to be able to adjust the live scheduling. Missed the end of the men's pole vault final. The men's tennis final also cut off early in the 4th set, though luckily I expected this as it started about 2 hours later than scheduled so I manually set the next 3 hours to record after the scheduled end time to be safe.

They still don't appear to have learned from the countless times this has happened in football matches that have gone to extra time so gone beyond the scheduled end time, most notably in last seasons's FA Cup Final. The usual excuse is that it's happened on ESPN and they don't control that channel. Surely the Olympic pop up channels are completely under their control however. It now seems to be a requirement when recording sport that you remember to manually set say the next couple of hours on the same channel just in case it goes on longer. 

With things like weather delays, extra time, tennis matches going longer than straight sets etc it's pretty common for various sports to last beyond the scheduled finish time so how difficult is it for someone to be checking on them and adjusting the scheduling the make sure recordings continue to the end?

good example - this would be amazing and would revolutionise viewing of sport - however the sports on this website (for the NZ area at the very least) are not being shown legally as they don't hold the rights for most of their football content - I suspect that they may have rights in some markets possibly but just because your paying a company doesn't mean the rights are legit.

So of course they are able to offer $9 a month and first month free - they have not had to spend a cent on rights for NZ - while beIN have had to stump up 10million over the next 3 years.

This is where your model struggles - there are two types of sports in NZ, mainstream stuff which has an element of local sport (ie played/filmed in NZ) and then a purely international sport such as Premier League.  for the mainstream stuff there is typically a viewership group that wants this content bundled so they can watch cricket, netball, rugby, rugby league etc - Potentially there are a few customers who only want the rugby - or narrower still only All Blacks games and that's why something like FanPass exists.  Costs for rights for this mainstream local stuff is normally manageable because even if the cost is high there is relatively large amounts of subscribers to try and monetise the rights from.

That's the major problem with the international rights - using premier league for example - their rights all over the world recently have tripled, bidding wars in the UK married with an increase in interest have pushed the value of the premier league rights through the roof in the last 2 bidding cycles - when premier league pass won the rights they paid triple what SKY had paid for the 3 seasons before that and when beIN won the rights this year they paid triple what PLP paid.  Now that's all well and good in a market like the UK or in Europe where there are literally millions of customers - but in NZ how can businesses justify paying triple the price to deliver the content to the same segment of the market - even if the Premier League segment of the market in NZ tripled it's still coming off such a small base that it makes little difference.  How many subscribers PLP have in the end - 10 thousand maybe?  Ok so that' means each customer would have to pay $300 a year in the current market just to cover the cost beIN paid in rights....  All of sudden looking a little more expensive than the $108 from dazn. 

If sites like this continue to do what they do then yes I can see and end to some sports on SKY - if you were SKY would you continue to bother with content that bleeds revenue when piracy of it is rife?  And that's sad because it's such a great piece of content because of the reasons above it's a tough piece to keep hold of.

With Rugby, Rugby League, Netball, Cricket - I don't see them jumping off the SKY bandwagon anytime soon as they rely on the broadcasting income to run their leagues - at the end of the day without SKY and their customers (and their equivalents in Aussie and SA)there wouldn't be Super Rugby, The Warriors, The Breakers, The A League.  SKY Customers money directly feeds professional athletes pockets! 

But I thought Sky paid insufficient amounts for the A League to the point where we almost lost our only professional football club.  And what would happen if another player bought the rights, does the money not go to the same place?  

I don't like that smug attitude, and it epitomizes the attitude that I believe Sky has.  Without us, x wouldn't exist, like they were the only player that could have ever existed.  If Sky didn't pay for Super Rugby I'm sure someone else would have.  If Sky is the reason these things exist, then surely they are the reason some struggle over others, and in which case why is Sky making the Nix struggle?  Can you answer that?

"SKY Customers money directly feeds professional athletes pockets!"

Really?  I'm pretty sure I pay sky and they pay for the exclusive rights, which goes to the league, which in turn goes to the clubs, which in turn goes to part of the players wages.  I don't think that's very direct.  Shark if my money goes directly to the professional athletes then surely its going straight from my account to their bank account or trust, I think the word you were looking for was indirectly.

my view is that rights holders will rapidly come to the realisation they need a technology platform, not a media company middleman, as IP delivery becomes forefront of consumption of content.

I think that the posts on this thread and the viewing the EPL thread show that people are willing to pay for a reliable live and on demand web service which shows football. It shouldn't be beyond a company of Sky's size to provide such a service but they can't even put their pop-up channels on FanPass (I've used FanPass before and wanted to use it again for the OFC Nations Cup and the Euros but Sky put them on pop-ups so I couldn't). There will always be some people who use pirated stuff, but most people just want a reliable, flexible service which fits with modern technology and lifestyles. Case in point is iTunes, or Spotify - what ever happened to Napster? Or what about Netflix? They're going strong, growing even, despite how easy it is to torrent pirated movies and TV shows.

Screw Sky. 

And the cold, hard, reality of PLP's crash and burn demonstrates that they are not...

Did they crash and burn? Or were they just outbid by someone else with deeper pockets? I don't believe they went bust did they?

bein outbid 3 times PLP for the rights, if the nbr is to be believed

I think you will find I said without SKY's customers these leagues wouldn't exist - not without SKY...


And yes indirectly if you want to be pedantic - I think you get the point I was making though.

entertainment programming is a whole different kettle of fish, and SKY are in a far more precarious position with that content than on the sports side of the business.

The asking price tripled - beIN met the value asked - PLP were not able to (neither were SKY to be fair)

Only a matter of time. The same underlying trends that have driven entertainment programming will reach sports soon enough 

I'm not sure to be honest - I am open to being convinced but I just have not seen a scenario that makes me think that entertainment and Sports programming (in NZ) will follow the same paths.

It's already happened in America. "Cord cutting" has become a popular phrase as more and more people leave cable tv. American sports offer their product direct to consumers via the Internet all over the world. The likes of ESPN  get a few games a week.

It's younger consumers doing the cord cutting too. While it's the older ones who cling to the cable tv model. 

Seems like a pretty massive example to me. It's strange to me that EPL haven't gone the same way, they have the international reach to be able to do so as a supplement to also selling certain games to local TV networks. 

again I don't think this is going to happen in the NZ market for local mainstream sports as the market size isn't there - entirely different in the US and different for overseas international sport like EPL - although to answer your question would EPL get 3 million a year from direct subscribers in NZ? if not then why bother from their point of view.

 

Yep they crashed and burned. Lightbox Sport (Spark) stepped in and bailed them out, and did not contest the rights bid next time around.

 

I don't think there's any reason it couldn't happen in NZ. Spark are probably best placed to lead the charge and they could do it by pouring cash into Lightbox to purchase the rights to rugby when they next come up.

Someone like Spark or Vodafone is incentivised to do that to stave off broadband becoming a pure commodity product.

If and when it happen you can be sure life will get worse before it gets better. 

You might have to be on Spark to watch your sport of choice, the rights will fracture across different providers, and it'll be a hell of a mess. A bit like it is now with TV - you have to have Netflix to watch House of Cards, you have to have some other thing to watch Game of Thrones, etc etc.

For a while anyway.

It's in the interests of rights owners to insist that anyone be able to access their content. Their leverage will ultimately be (as someone else has expounded above) that they deliver the content themselves to everyone and bypass the licensees...which pushes internet back into the commodity box.

But why would anyone pay that much if they couldn't get it back? 

EPL could get neulion or MLB to set up a platform for them, they could release it in multiple countries, spreading the cost of it, gaining an economies of scale, then sell direct to the consumer and make a killing. They'd also have cheaper cost structures than any local broadcaster or company could possibly have. 

They could then also go to sky etc in each country and sell a few games a week (or more) to each broadcaster. Seems to me like they're passing up an opportunity to have their cake and eat it too. It'll happen eventually I'm sure of it. 

Where sky has an advantage is local sports, or minor sports that don't quite have the reach of the above. They have on site broadcasting etc which has in the past allowed them to allegedly charge the sport for the privilege of their event being on sky - because it's their only option. But even then the Internet has changed that now. You see sports such as NBL basketball in NZ streaming their games live over the Internet. The NZ herald and stuff have even live streamed some sporting events on their website. OFC have also live streamed their events on the Internet. Sports are realising they don't have to pay sky for the privilege of coverage, they can just go direct to the consumer by streaming it. 

It is just a question of time before everyone cuts the cable, it's just happening slower than I hoped. For the tech savvy it is already possible to watch everything he wants. 

Look at the eg. Spanish league, the clubs try to bring their tax debt below 200 Mio Euro (from 610Mil in 2013). It's really sharkty business for clubs. I am not willing to paying extra cash for overhyped $100 Mio transfers.

 

Sky pay just to stop anyone else getting a chunk of the market. They don't need the revenue, they just need to protect their subscriber base.

Why would EPL take the enourmous risks associated with changing their revenue model while it's still working for them? Sure, they COULD go to direct distribution at any time. They might make more money in some markets. But similarly they might tank horribly. They aren't, after all, in the broadcast or transmission or internet markets. They could pour a sack of cash into changing models and end up much worse off.

As it is, they just run an auction and collect cheques. Easy peasy.

What's best for the consumer is not relevant in the absence of genuine competition.

my assessment is that it is not quite as simple as that, the premier league itself faces competition from the other top global leagues - it will need to innovate and be able to deliver content to attract newcomers to the sport, and if the consumers they covert do not have legacy platforms like satellite or cable broadcasting, they will need to connect to those potential customers.

Good points Smithy. I hadn't factored risk into my thinking. 

I do still think it'll happen eventually as there will be a tipping point where technology catches up, and adoption rates reach an acceptable point where the risk becomes small enough. It's certainly trending that way at the moment anyway. 

Donald Trump is happening in America as well

You think the EPL faces competition from the other top leagues? Maybe. But not in a straight swap sense. It's not like the EPL fans in New Zealand think "oh, I can't get the EPL on my TV, I'll stop supporting Chelsea and support Bayern instead, no problem."

You've tapped on two important points I think. 

One is the evolution of expectations. As young people grow into the bulk of the market their expectations will evolve, but that takes decades. My stepson finds it irritating that he can't watch easily on his laptop, but he isn't the one paying the bill yet and won't be for another 15 years. When he's 30 and running a household then he and his age group will drive the tipping point that Tegal was talking about.

Two is that over a long term this is genuine risk of substitution if the EPL doesn't maintain accessibility. If young folks can't get access to the EPL then as they get older the EPL risks losing them as fans.

This is an interesting tension because young people want easy on-demand access to the EPL on their device of choice, but they don't have much money to pay for it. Older folk are more able to pay, but also more slow to adopt new tech, and more committed to existing modes of access to sports. They are also more economically rational, so unlikely to switch unless it's overall in their interests.

It's a conundrum wrapped in a riddle.

Sorry, I could have been clearer I was talking about newer markets.

However, ponder this:

I think we're already seeing the star power in football as players and even increasingly managers. Imho, that trend will only increase. (Think about how background changes in a club has changed things in some of the the newer markets, look how club support in the epl shifted for Arabian consumers when ManCity was purchased. )

EPL will have to compete with other big leagues to be the 'best' in those new markets, and accessibility will be part of that mix.

Yeah, I can see why you would bring that up. 

On the one hand, post-Cold War neoliberal economic policies gutted the traditional place of America's white working class, who were told that globalization was great for the economy while they watched their manufacturing jobs disappear. Real wages stagnated while inequality has risen. The political system in their country has become dominated by special interest groups and deadlocked in paralysis because of a two party system where one party can hold the executive and the other can hold the legislature. Add in a back drop of a perceived threat of Islamic terrorism, itself largely created by interventionist American foreign policy, and a partisan media, and an obsession with celebrity and "self-made" men. Now you have the right ingredients for a charlatan populist, a political outsider who is basically pulling his moves straight from the playbook of 1930s fascism, who can connect with angry disenfranchised voters in middle America in a way no traditional politician could.

On the other hand, some people are pissed off at paying too much for cable TV so they are cancelling their subscriptions.

I sure hope people in NZ keep subscribing to Sky or else we might get our own Donald Trump.

Just for those who still think streaming is legal

COURT FINDS PARKER PIRATES LIABLE

SKY and Duco confirmed today that SKY has obtained judgment against seven individuals who unlawfully streamed the Parker v Haumono fight. The Judge was satisfied that each defendant had infringed SKY's copyright. Further the Judge granted an injunction restraining any further infringement of the copyright work and that each defendant must delete and/or destroy any copies held, including from Facebook and must pay nominal damages of $100 as well as costs of $2,670. SKY chief executive John Fellet said: “It’s a good result to have this unlawful behaviour confirmed by the courts. We have more claims in the judicial system that we await further positive results from in the coming weeks. In our opinion, we believe that Piracy is theft of copyright. We will continue to work hard to protect SKY’s investments in all kind of content. I can’t wait for Saturday’s Parker v Ruiz fight, anyone wanting to observe this fantastic event can watch on SKY Arena. I urge you to book early, it’s already very popular. If you don’t have SKY just purchase from Fan Pass or go to a venue that is showing the fight – there are plenty of legal options”. Duco chief executive Martin Snedden wasn’t pulling any punches on the matter: “This is a good result, I just hope the message gets out just how seriously we, SKY and Duco, take this unlawful behaviour. We have a larger team than ever working this weekend to find anyone unlawfully streaming Parker v Ruiz”.

Out of interest, what does he mean by needing to book early because it's popular? Makes it sound like it's something that could sell out like actual tickets to the thing.

typically domestic PPV purchasers lean to the day of to make a purchase - normally there can up to 60% of buys on the day of the fight - that can cause a lot of delays on the phones as people try to do normal day to day business as well.


In every PPV SKY encourage early booking, or booking via SMS or internet etc etc to reduce this issue on the day

As indicated in the article, it is a civil matter, not a criminal one,(unless you are streaming to others for profit typically.)

your really only arguing semantics - it's not legal.. but yes it's not as bad as breaking a criminal law.

FYI these 7 people were ones who were re-broadcasting it to in some cases 1,000's of people.

A business taking advantage of a dominant position in a market so it can engage in anticompetitive practices is also illegal in NZ, but of course Sky can afford better lawyers than the streamers can....

http://i.stuff.co.nz/business/86586127/Sky-TV-lose...

http://i.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/86474917/...

That's just not true. Sky isn't being anti-competitive. You are well within your rights to create your own streaming network, find your own boxer and sell it to people on PPV. Sky have exclusivity to the Parker fight because they purchased the rights to the fight. If other people want the rights to the fight then they simply have to outbid Sky. Exclusivity is obviously not synonomous with anti-competitve

I wasn't saying the Parker fight PPV was an example of anticompetitive behaviour, I was saying that Sky's attempt to prevent other networks showing highlights of sports games on their news services was anticompetitive - which is why I linked to those articles. 

That doesn't mean that illegally streaming content which Sky has the rights to is just or ethical, of course. I just think Sky price gouges and offers substandard products and gets away with it because it monopolises sports coverage in NZ. Sometimes that monopoly seems, to a layman, to get pretty close to being illegal itself but those sort of convictions are notoriously hard to get to.

Or, to put it more simply, fudge Sky and the horse they rode in on.

You could make that exact argument for any monopoly.  

That anyone could spend billions to enter a market therefore its not anti-competitive.

if you want uk, us and Canadian tv as well aswait premium live sports and premium movies at high definition download kodi and contact vaderstreams on Twitter. $20 a month. I watched Parker fight on there on sat night on uks boxnation. great quality with no issues at all

except that it's illegal, to be more precise copyright infringement.

I believe that wasn't tested in court. The case was settled before hand. So it's more a legal grey area.

'Global Mode' may well be legal.

I don't think you get it - someone has won the rights to A-League in some other country (say South Africa), if they stream it to people outside of their country (say NZ) then they are committing copyright infringement - regardless of if you the end user is paying or not.

The court case was aimed at those who are making the stream not those who are watching the stream and yes that was tested in court and those 7 streamers were found in breach of the copyright act.

People who watch a stream are at this stage not the attention but I'm pretty sure at some point people who own rights as well as people who have won them will be turning their attention to them.

1 way to stop the problem is to have more content available online - and I think that's something SKY need to improve on but there will always be some content someone somehow legitimises in their own head that streaming isn't stealing - but it is.