[redstar bellend]

Ye it looks fairly cheep alright, but not seeing redknapp talking absolute muck is surely a bonus!

[Minstrel27]

Originally Posted by MisterAnarchy

I cant see anyone taking over from Sky as the main provider.
We have seen others try,ITV Sport and Setanta ,all crashed and burned.

How would Al Jazeera reach the masses ,how would they handle the encryption ?
Would they use the existing Sky network or would people need new set top boxes ?
I couldnt see them making any money out of it ,the tv rights are already grossly overpriced .
Its only pr talk and the last thing we need is the tv rights pie being divided up by another pay tv company.
Sky,ESPN,Al Jazeera,Setanta ,how many subs would one need to watch ?
Better the devil you know .

I would still find Sky losing rights hilarious.

[snaps]

it will be the consumer that will loose out. Im not a fan of sky, but its not just epl they have. If your a rugby, darts, cricket, snooker fan, you would still need to have sky to watch these other sports. At least while sky have the epl you get a lot of sport from one broadcaster. I think sky have covered themselves with their price freeze for up until august 2013, which is when the new epl contracts begin.

[razor69]

Anyone here have a link to The Premier Leagues financial statement. Now by this I mean the ACTUAL LEAGUE FINANCES and NOT THE INDIVIDUAL CLUBS. I'd like to see a year by year statement stating how much the league got in total for its overseas/international rights.(I know they won't give country by country as it may affect future prices when put to tender) Also would like to see how much Mr Scudamore pays himself. A friend sent me a graph showing a drop in overseas rights sales in a couple of seasons when a certain team did not win the league, but could not remember the site he got it from. The leagues profits seem quite secretive. IE is it in the leagues financial interest for a certain team to win the league when trying to sell its wares in other markets??

Just can't believe that they are not firmly in bed with Sky. Simply to much at stake for Sky and the EPL!

[snaps]

Sky only took off when the EPL begun in 1993?? If it wasnt for the EPL, I highlydoubt they would be as big as they are now?

[STB]

Originally Posted by razor69

Just can't believe that they are not firmly in bed with Sky. Simply to much at stake for Sky and the EPL!

Of course they are, number one customer!

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showp...6&postcount=52

[MisterAnarchy]

Al Jazeera has decided not to bid for the Premier League television rights when the next auction starts in August for a three year period. Al Jazeera had been seriously considering such a move as part of its plans to build a global sports brand.

The form of the packages to be offered has not yet been decided, but the Premier League had been hoping that Al Jazeera, backed by Qatar's gas and oil wealth, would go head-to-head with Sky. It now looks as if only BSkyB and ESPN will be involved in the main packages.

A comment issued by Citigroup said: 'The bidding process will potentially have more twists and turns, making the process more complicated to analyse. In general, though, the direction of travel is favourable to BSkyB. The move to pan-European rights, if that happens, would raise the barriers to entry into the auction while reports of Al Jazeera's non-involvement, if confirmed, suggest the bidding process will stay rational.'

This means that is is unlkely that there will be a significant real terms increase in revenue for clubs of the kind that has been seen in the past, but they are unlikely to see the key television revenues diminish.

As I expected the talk of bidding was just that.
Sky's monopoly would be impossible to break and a bid by Al Jazeera would be a monstrous loss maker.

[Tom Cruise]

They will have to change the name of the prem lge to something like Etihad league,OH WAIT.

Anyhow anybody could buy the rights if it gets put up for auction.

[banie01]

Originally Posted by Tom Cruise

Anyhow anybody could buy the rights if it gets put up for auction.

True they could....
But noone with any degree of sense would under the current rights setup.
That anybody would need a monstrous cashpile and be willing to risk staking it on a loss making venture in the hope of winning at least the next follow up deal.
They would need to own a lot of satellite bandwith ideally on a co located 28.2/28.5 bird(to allow rapid migration of customer base without technical/Sat knowledge to realign dishes).
They would need to have a large existing install base.
They would need a massive amount of setup on the logistics side to allow immediate and rapid burst growth.
They would need to pump a huge amount of money into advertising.
And assuming pan european rights they would need to set up and maintain a multilingual customer support and sales team in a call centre somewhere that would be dealing with a frankly massive volume of throughput.

None of the above are cheap, and indeed assuming a £1.8Bln rights price, add in the associated costs of Satellite Bandwidth @28.2e, or indeed of getting everyone to point at a different bird(which unless subsidised via a free install won't be a goer) Call centre premises/staffing/training, Advertising, and getting tied with a logistics/installation supplier, Licensing whichever encryption method you will use(28.2 use dictates NDS which wont be an easy negotiation)Or rolling out a whole new system of boxes to end users, with the associated purchase subsidy and install costs.

Its safe to say that Sky have a dominant position that while not impossible to overtake, can't be done by any competitor profitably in the 3yr timeframe available via the current rights deal.

[recyclebin]

Could Al Jazeera not just go after some of the rights and broadcast them through Sky like ESPN and Setanta currently do?

This would get their foot in the door and then they could look to expand later.

[banie01]

Originally Posted by recyclebin

Could Al Jazeera not just go after some of the rights and broadcast them through Sky like ESPN and Setanta currently do?

This would get their foot in the door and then they could look to expand later.

Personally I think thats the way to go, if they can outbid ESPN and whomever takes Setanta's package(Because I can't see them holding it) in the next round and negotiate Sky EPG placement and associated details with BSkyB,and getting Bandwidth via Eutelsat @28.5 or Astra at 28.2 would be a viable option, whether or not BskyB will play ball is another thing.
I think its very doable but could take an anti-competition ruling to resolve if Sky play hardball.

[byte]

I wonder if Setanta will be in again for the Irish 3pm Saturday game? Maybe RTE might offer a few quid...

Heck, is it possible that FAPL will pull that package, for fear of UK residents getting access to Setanta with its English langauge commentary?

[NUTZZ]

Originally Posted by byte

I wonder if Setanta will be in again for the Irish 3pm Saturday game? Maybe RTE might offer a few quid...

Highly doubtful since they're considering dropping Champions League Wednesday night rights due to cuts!

[Headshot]

Originally Posted by NUTZZ

Highly doubtful since they're considering dropping Champions League Wednesday night rights due to cuts!

WHAT!

****ing idiots RTE, paying huge wages to the likes of that Late Late show twat instead of keeping the best thing on RTE going

[Dre as in Dray]

RTE are showing Champions League

http://www.irishtimes.com/sports/soc...315383994.html