Getting rid of Sky Sport 101

Man, I got the news I was hoping for today when Sky TV phoned me to confirm their Copa America coverage after I enquired earlier in the week

We're in for the biggest festival of football in the history of NZ with the announcement today that Sky are showing all 32 games in the Centenary Copa America starting Saturday week. If you have Sky of course - but you could watch some matches at a bar I guess.

https://www.sky.co.nz/-/copa-america-centario-2016

Sky TV the next six weeks:

OFC Nations Cup 28 May - 11 June.

Centenary Copa America 4 - 27 June NZT (special edition with all the South American nations plus the best CONCACAF nations)

Euro 2016 11 June - 11 July NZT

All games in the Copa America live on Sport Pop-Up ch. 57

(replays and highlights on other channels)

There's still a special offer going for Sky Basic plus Sky Sport for six months minimum contract for $39 / month from a marketing company who work for Sky (less than $10 / week) - you can get the special offer for up to one year but it's six months minimum. They also give you a free My Sky Plus box to record everything on for up to one year.

I've been enjoying this offer very much for a few months now.

ph. 0800 475 988 (Icon Marketing) on week days until you get someone answering - leaving a message usually isn't effective.

(only this number - you don't get the deal by phoning the regular Sky TV number)

YES! I couldn't be happier! Thanks Pete for letting us know. Loved watching the Copa America last year and I look forward to watching it again this year. So stoked they have it. Good job Sky!

you will miss me when I'm gone. Come on you all whites!!!

Great news about the Copa America, really looking forward to that

Pleasantly surprised that Sky is bidding for these things, had assumed they were going to drop all of this sort of content that they don't see as core business now.

I bit the bullet after struggling to watch the Champions League final without Sky. Got on the $39/mo deal. Installation Wednesday.

I feel good about it insofar as my total spend for 6 months is less than $250 which would barely cover the cost of a tech to instal the dish on my roof (all of which they're paying for). So they're making basically no money out of me. 

But if they got with the times, there is a whole user base untapped that will pay $40 a month for Sky over Internet. Because Sky chose not to start embracing "innovation" (and I say it like that cause it's not really innovative) they would have higher income for fudge all outlay and a growing subscriber base.

Hmm. This is essentially 5th form economics. If I reduce price, demand will increase. But there is a lot more to it than that. 

Even if your basic premise is true (ie that demand for pay tv will respond strongly to a reduced price), is it in the interests of shareholders to sacrifice guaranteed revenue from mugs who love rugby in exchange for the chance of an unknown amount of revenue from folks who don't love rugby? 

Sky have been economically rational throughout. Sadly.

Oh no I was not suggesting reducing the price. 

I was suggesting that by providing the platform online, those that don't have Sky and want to pay to watch it through the Internet on their PC (and with the vaguarities that go with internet speed, drop outs and hooking it up to the TV) can do so. Cater to both markets. Then there is no hardware cost for Sky install and decoder (which I grant you 1200 per year minus hardware vs 400 per year with no hardware makes an interesting ROI case) and they get an extra market. It'll only work for so long but why wait for tomorrow when you can start today.

depends how many they think would switch from decoder to their online service. I do think there are seperate markets, but there probably is evidence of enough crossover that doing so would cannabilise their satellite market. 

There will be a tipping point in the future, I don't think sky are doing a good job of preparing themselves for that. 

They would need to spend a lot of money on their infrastructure.

They get away with shark online services as its a "freebie" with sky subs so if it doesn't work oh well, and their one game passes are so over priced that I'd be surprised if many use the service at any given time.

They would need to spend megabucks to allow for a large number of users constantly using it, because I'm sure they could be in trouble if you pay for an online service that doesn't function because too many paying customers are using it.

Aha, I see. Well yes I entirely agree this is what they should be (and I suspect are) moving towards. Experiments with Neon, Fanpass and so on suggest a series of toes dipped into digital delivery. Shrewd.

Now is also the time. As the worm turns on their traditional revenues they still have some time to milk the japseye of rugby fans while ploughing some money into digital.

However, that isn't the story they've told the sharemarket so far. So I reckon a significant digital investment is at least 12 months away.

I see there is a major daytime sports event (Game 7 NBA Conf Finals) and that SkyGo has shat itself once again...EVERYTIME!

Yeah I think while it's smart of them to dip their toes into streaming, their services are so bad that when they do finally invest in it their reputation will be stuffed, and they will have already driven people to VPNs and the like. 

Will be interesting to see what happens anyway. 

Yep...

I am freaking raging about this. Just want to watch the goddam service I pay for. 

And they get it back with less than 2 mins left on the clock and the game all but over...god they are a joke.

Watched all of this series, but missed Game 7.

Hey Sky

^Pretty much sums up the reasoning for my frustrations and disgust with Sky as a provider.

They still haven't figured out how to provide content to their paying customers.  I'm sure the issue is they dont have enough capacity for so many of their customers trying to view the content they are paying for.

Protip for Sky: anticipated capacity should be the number of people paying for it.

I am a big defender of sky here as I like a lot of sport, and I would hate to have to go and buy access to the various sports and events that I want to watch individually.  I would have to likely pay a lot more than I do now, and at the same time, watch a lot less variety of sport.

Having said that, their SkyGo service is indefensible.  It consistently fails during the very times when people want to use it the most. It didn't effect me this time as I have access to a TV this afternoon, but it has in the past. It is complete rubbish.

I always get NBA league pass for the playoffs. It's brilliant. 

Want to let Sky know that you would like the Pop Up channels included in Fan Pass. Email [email protected] to give them your feedback.

Hmmm, trading halt on Sky pending an announcement.

Sky and Vodafone... this can only end well.

Well fudgeed up.

Unless they then work with Vodafone to get better streaming #WishfulThinking

I dunno.  I reckon that's exactly what Voda will want to do, go head to head with Spark with a huge starting point.

I reckon it's a dumb idea.

Good bit of analysis here from Tom PS - http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/8...

I can see the attraction at a basic level from either side, but beyond the fundamentals things fall apart pretty quickly.

What I can't see is how they can successfully become one entity without neglecting either aspect (content or delivery) of their business as neither is strong enough to move forward (hence the position each is currently in). My concern is their looking to create a "strong" business on paper; pay out some shareholders; then look to be on-sold. Very rarely do such strategies/scenarios end well.

Fudge just saw it would likely be Sky buying voadfone, I changed my mind, shark idea.

What's the difference?

I quite like that the media has dubbed it Skodafone.

I think that was twitter and media grabbed it from there...

I guess for Monk it was thinking a merge with Vodafone having 'better' management....looks terrible all around to me...I'm not even sure I can actually see the advantages for Sky in owning a Telco...surely they should instead invest those millions into the infrastructure to improve their online offerings...?

I would imagine they think this is part of the benefit of obtaining vodafone.

This.  I haven't been a big fan of Sky in many years (though I keep paying them so *shrug*), hopefully they are doing it to get their tech up to scratch but because of my personal opinions I was hoping for an overhaul of how they did things, whereas seeing Voda come under the Sky banner in my mind has me skeptical.

 Its anyones guess as to what actually happens though.  Skodafone is awesome.

How though? They don't actually do that. 

I think they're trying to replicate Spark. But it made sense for Spark to move into entertainment etc, I'm not sure it makes sense for Sky to move into telecommunications. 

Quite a strange deal. 

It's agreed and Vodafone will own 51% of the combined business. Link

Interesting to see how this impacts on customers, being a customer of both personally.

It may turn out that Getting Rid of Sky 101 is simply - get your internet from notVodafone.

Obviously the document is dripping with greasy marketing bullsh*t, but these four points illustrate what they're going to be doing I think;

For Sky to make the leap and significantly change their services etc, this merger does seem smart on the face of it. 

But will reserve that judgment until I get into some more analysis from the clued up business types... 

Bit confusing that the media are reporting it as Sky buying Vodafone but Vodafone will own 51%. How does that work?