Situation at Sky T.V.

[fenman]

This post is only loosely connected to football . There is an interesting situation developing at Sky tv company at the moment .A rift has developed between them and Discovery over the new contract .Discovery provides several of the channels shown on Sky tv  , such as Eurosport , Quest , Discovery and many others . The dispute is over money for the next contract . It appears that Discovery will split from Sky and broadcast all their channels on Freeview  . For me personally if this happens it's good news  as my main sporting interest is motorcycle sport which Eurosport  cover well  . Hopefully I will save the £80 + a month that I have to suffer to watch my sport . The other dross i.e. films , repeats of old B.B.C. programmes , masses of what passes as comedy in the States and artificial documentaries with fake drama I can live without . Some football I will miss but the way the professional game is going with the cheating , the hours of analysing officials errors etc. etc. perhaps I won't miss it so much .

My main point is how will this effect the Premiership ?  If Sky's income is severely reduced , firstly by the loss of Discovery's money then by the knock on effect of idiots like me who fork out nearly £1000 a year ( isn't it frightening when you look at it annually ?)   cancelling subscriptions and moving to Freeview , where you can still watch European games , what will happen ?. They are already laying off staff due to money problems and viewing numbers for live matches have dropped considerably by all accounts . I know many will say that their income from the far East  is sufficient for them to carry on but will it ? . It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few years as regards the riches of the Premiership as it appears that BT may also have overreached itself financially with its involvement in football . Many people are objecting to their increase in phone and internet charges to offset the enormous amount of money BT have paid to broadcast football .  

[stevieb]

If. You want to watch live football I am afraid  it will be pay to watch and won't change SKY has the monopoly  with BT trying catch up  , I can see in the near future that you will be able to purchase a TV season ticket for your own club and watch all their games  as an extra payment .  Those with pay TV  football how many games do we actually watch ? Now TV from Sky is ok if you want to pick games  and pay seven quid for 24 hours .  Where will it end ? The richest clubs prosper the bottom end left scratching for the scraps . When TV rights were first discussed why the hell BBC and ITV didn't do a joint bid and share games , ITV tried with On Digital but that went by the wayside Settanta also the same , SKY is now the big player in sports coverage , PPV for boxing was brought in when one time all the big fights were shown on the main sports channel  now you want to watch top boxing you either pay through the nose or miss out .

[TheolderIgetthebetterIwas]

Took sky out of my house 16 years ago and have never missed it....load of old rubbish.

We have also taken sky and BT sport out of our club....not missed one bit.

Televised football audiences are actually on the wane, and it looks like the next round of tv money will be greatly reduced - good.

[Mangle]

It didn't happen. 11th hour agreement.