Getting rid of Sky Sport 101

It's pretty hard to binge watch 12 weeks of live sport in one day, John. Completely different. 

Netflix gives you the first month free and you can disconnect whenever you want, so you actually can do exactly what he says you can't do. For free even.

And cost of cheapest Netflix option per month:$11.49, and you can cancel whenever

Cost of cheapest FanPass option per month: $54.99, and you're locked in for 6 months

Probably not the best comparison to justify your price hike

Brilliant from The Spinoff on how are shooting themselves in the foot for short term gain but long term pain. 

https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/05-05-2017/sky-has-...

i be going back to streams now, been using fan pass a bit lately but no longer at those prices.

Those options are insanely bad. I bought the Fan Pass regularly to watch Phoenix away games, quality was OK and it was convenient, but those new prices are an absolute joke. They don't get a penny from me.

I'm guessing this is them throwing their toys over the rejected Vodafone merger. 

vader + kodi. Every league you can imagine. 7 days of ondemand catch up. Sky have just accelerated their demise, and sports will lose their new , young audiences

a lot of people's attitude to watching sport is weird - "I demand that I can watch all the games I want to, when I want to, on whatever platform I want to, at an affordable price. If that is not forthcoming, I will just steal it."

I understand that some sports provide an amazing ability to watch it, specifically NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL (put in order of how good the sports are), but that does not mean that we can just expect it to be the same for every sport that we watch. It is basic supply and demand, and the TV companies will ensure that they satisfy the greatest demand. I am not sure that there are waterpolo fans demanding that they be able to see every water polo match live, on their tv and on their iphone (if they happen to be out when their favourite team is playing) because they understand that water polo is weird, not really a sport and is clearly dangerous for horses. For some reason, football fans in NZ think that they have a divine right to be treated the same as league and union, when it clearly does not merit the same.

regional monopolies are distorting the market for minority sport watchers. This is the first year I have had to move off streaming legal content, because legal a-league and premier league could be paid for legally, with some location masking (for a league). I have been forced into the greyer end of the market. Watching content on someone elses schedule does not suit me, nor does catch up in my lounge only worth having.

It's 2017 for God sakes. I want it on demand, on every device, and trying to change $10 a month for hd on a mains powered device!?! 

Legacy content providers are going to crash hard, and I have no sympathy. They are ripe for disruption, and sky will be dead within 5 years.

So much this. Sports broadcasting/streaming is a terrible example of the free market in action. Supply is constrained by the practice of exclusive regional rights, and by the technical barriers to entry in broadcasting ( which are diminishing rapidly now but were huge for most of Sky's existence). As a result Sky has a natural monopoly on the industry here. It's got nothing to do with the relative interest in different sports in NZ - rugby has no legit web-based service at all, other than FanPass. Sky has no incentive to provide anything better in the short or medium term, so they haven't. In fact, their price hike for FanPass is actually them trying to discourage people from using it, because tv subscriptions are more valuable. This is what monopolies do - they gouge consumers and throttle innovation.

They are clearly in a death spiral, it surprises that they still can hold on for that long. Customers demand is different, every media gets streamed these days. For 99$ Fanpass/month I can rent 13 itunes movie s, plus get Netflix and Amazon prime and everything without commercials.

i do not watch lots of games on fanpass, i will normally get it for the week as it cost 19.95 where the daily charge is 14.95, if the phoenix had 2 away games in the same week ie 2 weekends in a row i will watch these 2 games and not much else so i pay for a week to watch 2 games. i do not binge watch sport just for the sake of watching sport. with the a league final on tonight i would normally of bought a pass to watch but the new costings make it well out of my price range to watch 1 game of football so i will watch on a stream, this may upset some people and so be it each person has their own morals and if some can afford to pay such high prices to watch sport then good on them feel free to do so, but others can not afford the prices and have to watch any way they can.

I put together some words on the whole mess...

https://in-the-back-of-the.net/2017/05/07/streaming-error/

I enjoyed the headline of the Spinoff article on this: "Sky TV have fool proof plan: turn off the internet."

I want a new Mercedes but cannot afford one, so will just steal one

It's actually not the same, watching a stream is a grey area. And even if it would be stealing, a Mercedes cost $50000+ a stream $99

If you steal a Mercedes someone else goes from having a Mercedes to not having a Mercedes so is materially worse off. If you stream live sports from someone other than the rights holder then the rights holder is no worse off than if you hadn't watched it at all.

If you want to buy a car but think a Mercedes is to expensive then you can get a cheaper brand. I have a 2007 Honda which thinks it's a Mercedes - leather seats, all electrics, 5 star safety rating. If you want to pay for streaming football but think Sky is too expensive then there is no paid alternative. And the exclusive rights model prevents competitors entering the market and driving prices down.

Also those American sports with great streaming or on demand services you mentioned - I'm pretty sure Sky has the rights to those in NZ too so from their perspective watching NFL on a paid stream though a VPN is just as much a violation of their rights as watching it on an illegal stream.

Consumers in NZ demand a paid streaming service. Sky realised that it could charge more because there was no competitor to undercut it, so it did. As a consumer you can either take Sky's shark and keep paying more and more for an inferior product or walk away. Once you've walked away it doesn't make any difference to Sky's bottom line if you illegally stream or not.

Not sure if this has been suggested already, but looking at the FanPass changes, isn't this really just a money-grabbing exercise for the Lions Tour?

Someone could have bought 3 daily passes to watch the 3 test matches only online, under the old system, for what, $45?

Now that person would have to pay $200 for 2 months worth of access to get the 3 tests?

Wouldn't be surprised if Sky re-instated the daily and weekly options straight after the tour... 

adn claim "we've listened to our customers"?

That's my general view. After the tour, they will say 'we've rethought this and have changed our mind'.

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_i...

Rugby partnering with Vodafone for digital content. Interesting timing right when Sky pull away from this area, and with the ABs broadcast deal up for renewal in 2020

Apparently, Sky's OSB have been working closely with Vodafone to bring this app to fruition.

Don't blame sky for exploiting their monopoly position while they can. Blame lazy competitors or Successive Governments that have allowed it to happen

Sky and Vodafone have a strong partnership anyway so I don't see how it would be a threat to Sky.

Short of something really falling apart between now and 2020 I doubt that there will be any change to the status quo.

approx 15% of sky's customer base left last year. And the year before that. They are on the cusp of serious pain, and a market adjustment.

and how many of those leaving joined back up again when their sports season started?

It's all in the annual report from 2016-

https://m.nzx.com/attachments/244208

This years due later this month.

Can't we blame all 3? The backlash from people like myself against Sky is what they get for not adapting to changing consumer demands. They don't get absolved of responsibility for a piss poor product just because they have developed a natural monopoly on sports broadcasting content

Got a letter direct from BeIn Sport advising a price increase. something like 17.95 for the BeIn channels and live on a compatible laptop or device. (Hello Sky)

Can you sign up for bein and get the online stuff wihtout signing up for sky?

Yes you can, but I think it's actually more expensive per month. Obviously still cheaper if you don't already have a sky decoder though. 

Only problem is that the website is just a straight stream of Bein 1. 

No on-demand.

And if the game you want to see is at the same time as another game, then you'll only see it if they televise it on Bein 1. On Sky you get a load of pop-up channels so they can televise all games at once.

It really is a sh*tty service tbh, premierleaguepass was superior, and cheaper. 

I really want to see DAZN grow globally. That's what i am looking for in a streaming service.

At the moment it seems you have to choose between legally licensed, or on demand and content library if you're not in germany, austria or switzerland :<

genuinely interested as to what everyone thinks will happen after the beIN rights expire?  

it'll certainly be interesting. 

BeIn seemed to significantly over pay for them, on the basis of thinking they'd also get rights in Australia (which is a weird strategy, but whatever). 

Will BeIn bid for them again? Maybe. 

Think most likely scenario is sky end up with the rights again. Or maybe Spark will use it as an opportunity to make a play in the sport streaming market? 

Any thoughts as someone who works at sky, Chopah? 

BeIn will bow out, Spark will outbid Sky in an effort to compete with the Sky/Vodafone axis. They will introduce an online streaming service as Lightbox Sport, but like regular Lightbox it will be a bit shark.

I am very concerned that if there isn't some kind of claw back of the cost for the rights that no-one will buy them.  I have heard figures of between 3 and 4 million per season is what beIN paid - you don't have to be a maths wizz to know that at say $20 a month you have to sell a lot to even start to breakeven on just the rights alone.

I don't think SKY will be in at that price - so for people who want to watch several sports I guess the hope is someone like ESPN Australasia picks up the rights and we get a couple of games per week on their channels.

Otherwise we will all have to resort to finding streams or subscribing to Geo-Blocked sites and using VPN's etc.

I think an online streaming service of all games with an on demand option coupled with a couple of games per week on TV is the ideal scenario. That's why I was fairly excited when the BeIn deal was announced, it's too bad it didn't work out that way. 

I doubt the rights will go for that much again, surely. Seemed like a one off situation. 

I hope your right - the rights for Premier League are trending up, I think the latest UK deal was roughly triple of the previous one so dosn't look good.

Hopefully everyone bids a sane amount and the sellers of the rights realise they can't expect the previous price to be met - lots of maybe's and what if's though.

I'm about to move house and am seriously considering alternative options... Sky at over $100/mth is simply over priced. Whilst the convenience is a huge benefit, the cost is getting out of control for what we watch (and don't watch). This is exacerbated by things like Netflix, Lightbox, etc being better value.

It's mainly just a question of sport. But I'll have a pub nearby - and a good fibre connection... I'm struggling to justify the cost any more.

You can get Sky including Sky Sports for $39 a month for a year, then reverts to full price, HD tkt is $10 more. As long as you cancel existing and sign up at the new place under someones else's name (wife, partner etc etc) then you're all good.

Edit: should point out it's another $16 a month for BeIN,