Sky to lose PL rights?

Headshot

Alot of talk about Al Jazeera going for the PL rights. But im wondering are they a real contender to beat sky ?

English Premier chief executive Richard Scudamore has issued a stern warning to Sky over the future of league's broadcasting rights.

The current agreement that allows Sky to broadcast Premier League games reaches the end of its three-year cycle in August 2013.

The Premier League intend to put out an 'invitation to tender' (ITT) for the next cycle, which will open up a bidding process based on deliverable quality of service.

After beating Canal+ to secure Ligue 1 and UEFA Champions League rights in France, Qatar-based Al-Jazeera have been tipped as the most likely broadcaster to end Sky's partnership with the Premier League.

Despite recognising the positive impact Sky have had on English football, Scudamore said there were no guarantees they would keep hold of Premier League viewing rights.

"Of course we have huge regard for them and respect, Sky's made it a fantastic impact on our business," Scudamore said on Wednesday.

"Ultimately whatever umbilical cord there might be as an ongoing working commercial relationship - that gets severed when the ITT gets issued and once we're in the process there's nothing they can do other than be the best bidder to win those rights."

Sky have provided the United Kingdom with live Premier League coverage since the competition's inception in 1992.

Personally It would make my life time to see sky lose the PL, what an epic day that would be

p.oconnor

Headshot wrote: »

Alot of talk about Al Jazeera going for the PL rights. But im wondering are they a real contender to beat sky ?



Personally It would my life time to see sky lose the PL, what an epic day that would be

Double edged sword rely, while it would be nice to see an end to the sky monopoly.

Imagine if a situation arose with sky, ESPN, Al Jazeera and Setanta all having a slice of the premier league pie, the cost to us the viewer would mean it wouldn't be viable to see every match.

I cannot understand why the premier league does not make at least one package FTA across Ireland and the UK, it would open up the premier league to people who cannot afford pay television.

Manc-Red

Sky need to be knocked off their perch here... The very fact a subscriber cannot just subscribe to Sky Sports on its own is criminal.

100 euro not for the whole package with HD per month....

Madness

Minstrel27

Sky being left with crumbs (as ESPN are atm) would be hilarious

Oat23

It would be glorious. I like Al Jazeera too. Good sports channels at a very good price and the news channel isn't too bad either!

STB

Its a pity that we wont have the option of the wholesale unbundled Sky option on DTT in Ireland. Lost opportunity.

Pal

Short memories folks.
If it wasn't for Sky we wouldn't have a Premier League.

Manc-Red

Pal wrote: »

Short memories folks.
If it wasn't for Sky we wouldn't have a Premier League.

Sky got the deal from the newly-set up EPL back in 1992.... Not the other way round.

I do agree that Sky have been a big reason as why the EPL has been a very lucrative league.... But sky are charging way too much now imo.

Minstrel27

Pal wrote: »

Short memories folks.
If it wasn't for Sky we wouldn't have a Premier League.

Sure let Sky have the rights forever more so. Everybody else should forget bidding.

jjspine

If you want cheap sky simply cancel your subscription with them !!

I did so was paying over 70 a month for sports and tv and got netflix in !!
3 weeks after i was switched off i got a nice begging letter and if i came back to sky i could get the package i was on for € 28.00 a month !!! Including the sports !!!

This is a year contract so cant go wrong their !!!!

just goes to show what profits they actually make

MisterAnarchy

Minstrel27 wrote: »

Sky being left with crumbs (as ESPN are atm) would be hilarious

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 .

redstar bellend

Well said mister anarchy, but on a different note i got the al jazeera pack a few months ago and its top drawer,pity about the picture stutter every 2 or 3 seconds though which does my nuts in,but for the equivelant of ten of your hard earned coins a month its a steel.

helimachoptor

If this happens i'll be highly highly surprised

Hannibal

the gospel according to Sky states that football began in 1992 and all results before then are irrelevent, so I wonder if al-Jazeera would begin a policy of football beginning in 2013 or would they realise there was a game before the Premier League.

Having seen some of al-Jazeeras other broadcasts with Lineker etc.. their studio work would need to massively improve as it's extremely tacky looking

byte

Dotsey wrote: »

Having seen some of al-Jazeeras other broadcasts with Lineker etc.. their studio work would need to massively improve as it's extremely tacky looking

Tacky it may be, but still quite an effort for a foreign broadcaster just to appease British people in UAE (let's not forget JSC isn't supposed to be accessible outside its target countries).

I'd be sure that if Al Jazeera won a significant FAPL Pie, then it'd adapt accordingly. They have a few quid about them, I believe.

Still, I doubt very much they'll push BSkyB off their perch. They might be of bigger concern to the likes of ESPN. I believe that even when you don't subscribe to Sky Sports, you're still contributing to the premium channels with part of your basic subscription.

Interesting times perhaps...

redstar bellend

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

Minstrel27

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

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

razor69 wrote: »

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/showpost.php?p=77833846&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

Tom Cruise wrote: »

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

recyclebin wrote: »

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

byte wrote: »

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

NUTZZ wrote: »

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

RTE are showing Champions League

http://www.irishtimes.com/sports/soccer/2012/0430/1224315383994.html