BT spend £80 million to snag rights to Australian cricket from Sky

After spending £12.5 billion on buying EE as well earlier this year I'm amazed BT have any money left.

Mafro wrote:
PCCD wrote:Anyone else wondering if BT can sustain this kind of spending?

They probably can. They get shitloads from Openreach.

...

So BT are outbidding Sky with money Sky pays to BT, to gain access to the BT exchange? No wonder Sky (and others) want it spun away from BT.

Errkal wrote:The only looser in all this is the customer, I don't watch much sport thankfully but if I did I would need so many different bloody subscriptions it would cost a friggin fortune all because of the split it who ahs rights to what and I'm sure in some cases (football I think) who has rights to watch matches in a championship, bloody stupid, this sort of thing shouldn't be allowed and the sporting bodies are nuts for selling it this was as it makes it harder for the end fan to actually watch because they need loads of subs or it is all over the place.

They used just sell the lot to the highest bidder but this was "uncompetitive" so they had to split them up and sell smaller packages. So you needed multiple subscriptsion to watch all of the premier league and now that has caused other sports to fracture, rugby, cricket etc are all spreading across both Sky and BT, all the splitting of the rights has done is cost the consumer more, its a pain the hole.

It should be pointed out these rights to the 2017-18 Ashes were being sold by Cricket Australia, not the ECB. So the rights are not being split up (as they are for the Premier League), as this is outside the Sky/ECB deal.

Ratings for both the Premier League and WWE are down on Sky Sports when compared to this time last year (in WWE's case by 50%). Now, you could say the games/storylines aren't as captivating as last year, or you could say this is evidence people are now dumping Sky Sports. The Sunday lunch time game on the 16th did well under 1 million, as did the Monday night game on the 10th (663,000) & first ever Friday kick off featuring Man Utd.

I rang Sky on Friday and told them I was going to move to Virgin as they were offering me a full movies & sport package for half price for 6 months.

After a bit of arguing, they agreed to give me a brand new box (2tb with built in WiFi) and half price for 10 months. Anybody that wants to reduce their costs, Sky are shitting themselves over BT, it is worth getting some decent deals out of them as they are desperate to keep customers.

Rax wrote:
Errkal wrote:The only looser in all this is the customer, I don't watch much sport thankfully but if I did I would need so many different bloody subscriptions it would cost a friggin fortune all because of the split it who ahs rights to what and I'm sure in some cases (football I think) who has rights to watch matches in a championship, bloody stupid, this sort of thing shouldn't be allowed and the sporting bodies are nuts for selling it this was as it makes it harder for the end fan to actually watch because they need loads of subs or it is all over the place.

They used just sell the lot to the highest bidder but this was "uncompetitive" so they had to split them up and sell smaller packages. So you needed multiple subscriptsion to watch all of the premier league and now that has caused other sports to fracture, rugby, cricket etc are all spreading across both Sky and BT, all the splitting of the rights has done is cost the consumer more, its a pain the hole.

But, but, consumer choice!

Consumer choice only works if they can sell rights to the same games to different channels.

The current format does not benefit the consumer at all.

A major rethink needs to happen with TV rights and things like that, the same situation is happening with streaming TV and movies. You need Sky, Netflix and Amazon Prime (and probably a few I cant think of) to ensure you get access to everything. Its pie in the sky stuff but some system where all content is on everything with the only difference being the service offered to the consumer would be the best solution.

If you're not into their original content, you don't need Amazon Prime.

Lagamorph wrote:If you're not into their original content, you don't need Amazon Prime.

Unless u like three old men driving cars.

Lagamorph wrote:After spending £12.5 billion on buying EE as well earlier this year I'm amazed BT have any money left.

Judging by how my BT bill has risen over the past two years - and is again from September - I'm starting to realise where they are getting their money from.

NickSCFC

Is EE still becoming BT Mobile next year?

BT spend £80 million to snag rights to Australian cricket from Sky

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