Sky unveil plans for Euro tv giant!

snaps

So its finally been announced...

http://news.sky.com/story/1307204/bskyb-unveils-plan-for-european-pay-tv-giant

Mr Murdoch is going to form a pan european TV Giant.

Wonder how this will work with regards to TV rights, Prices etc etc and of course the consumer?

icdg

Nothing will change in the short term. Sky is buying Sky Italia along with the controlling stake in Sky Deutschland from Fox. Since the latter maintains it's stock exchange listing this will trigger an offer for the latter but Sky will need a certain level of acceptances in order to take Sky Deutschland private.

But expect the three companies to remain seperately run for the foreseeable future, at least until a merger with Canal Plus is palatable (and the French government will do all they legally can to prevent that happening!) Only then would bidding for rights on a pan-European scale become feasible.

There's debate as to what Murdoch's long term role in Sky will be now. He may decide to try again to take over the company (which he only owns 39% of despite often treating it as if it were a subsidiary)but some think he will sell off and get out of the European TV business, particularly if he does eventually get his hands on Warner Bros which he is currently trying to buy.

aindriu80

Question : Will there now be Italian channels on Sky Ireland with this deal ? Surely you should be able to get Sky News Italia.

lertsnim

aindriu80 wrote: »

Question : Will there now be Italian channels on Sky Ireland with this deal ? Surely you should be able to get Sky News Italia.

It would be nice if it worked like that. Take for example Sky Sport News on Sky Deutschland. It is so much better than the UK version.

aindriu80

lertsnim wrote: »

It would be nice if it worked like that. Take for example Sky Sport News on Sky Deutschland. It is so much better than the UK version.

Yeah it would be great to get some of the German/Italian channels. I was learning Italian a while back and always missed an Italian channel on Sky. The UK Sky Sports gets a bit tough to listen to after a while.

dublinman1990

The part that was of interest to me in this article was that BSkyB has sought to reduce it's reliance on the EPL to sign major renewal deals in other sports and invest more heavily in drama and entertainment content.

Does this mean that the EPL would overtime have it's rights transferred to BT Sport as the main broadcaster given it's current position in the market over the years has been completely saturated by Sky?

Would it be worth it in future for BT Sport to takeover the UK rights for the EPL?

On the drama and entertainment side, customers on Sky might be seeing more foreign drama and entertainment from Germany and Italy over the coming years which maybe a plus for them.

ftakeith

if sky lose EPL it might try to do a deal for wholesale of bt sport on sky tv

7upfree

aindriu80 wrote: »

Question : Will there now be Italian channels on Sky Ireland with this deal ? Surely you should be able to get Sky News Italia.

Had Sky Italia in a hotel in Italy last year. It's almost a duplicate.

Digifriendly

aindriu80 wrote: »

Yeah it would be great to get some of the German/Italian channels. I was learning Italian a while back and always missed an Italian channel on Sky. The UK Sky Sports gets a bit tough to listen to after a while.

I was on holiday in Italy recently and saw Sky Italia and was quite impressed. It includes Sky News as well as a channel devoted exclusively to tennis. It would be good if some of their offerings came to Sky on these islands.

icdg

Rights issues would prevent them offering all but the news channels. The bigger issue though is that Sky EPG slots are valuable and there just isn't any great demand out there for foreign langauge channels.