I think sky missed a big opportunity with neon that allowed lightbox into the tv/movie streaming market with a big share.
They're in danger of going down that path again with sports, but can still turn it around at this point. Can see your point regarding positioning themselves then biding their time to make the switch, it's just as paulm pointed out the comments from sky management haven't really indicated that, or been very encouraging. Also the bad Reputation services like skygo, fanpass and neon are building through sky providing them in a "half assed" manner won't exactly help if/when they do decide to make the move.
There have been figures provided about a drop in total subscribers, it'd be interesting to know how many dropping are movies, sport or both. Also how much of the latest figure is seasonal, I imagine there is a big uptake in lead up to things like the rugby World Cup, then people drop it afterward (not a great model to rely on a tournament which occurs every 4 years, but the flip side is you can basically ignore those customers as not being part of their core subscriber base, as the rise and cancellations negate each other).