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.
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.