RTÉ Sports Channel

spudato7

Does nobody else think that it would be a great idea for RTÉ to release a payTV channel for sports and show premier league football champions league GAA and minor GAA (club level) and all other types of sports for a small fee a month nothing ridiculous like sky sports!! But i think if they introduced this to saorview and brought in smart cards or TV cards i cant remember the name and broadcast it much like bt sport in the uk the way you can subscribe to bt sport through freeview this would mean people who have subscription tv just for sports would be able to combine saorview and freesat and still get the sports through RTÉ for much less and this would also bring loads of money into RTÉ and finally have a decent irish channel. I also think that Setanta should be introduced into saorview but i would love to hear peoples thoughts on this to see if its a terrible idea or if people think its good because i personally would definately go for an option thatd save money!

Fresh Pots

Would be a great little earner for them but I can't see people being happy having to pay even if it's only a small amount. Sure people won't even pay the tv licence!

I would like to see a complete restructuring in rte though. more so on the radio side but they could do with a complete revamp.

lertsnim

I don't see how you could expect a channel like this to be cheap.

The Lost Sheep

spudato7 wrote: »

Does nobody else think that it would be a great idea for RTÉ to release a payTV channel for sports and show premier league football champions league GAA and minor GAA (club level) and all other types of sports for a small fee a month nothing ridiculous like sky sports!! But i think if they introduced this to saorview and brought in smart cards or TV cards i cant remember the name and broadcast it much like bt sport in the uk the way you can subscribe to bt sport through freeview this would mean people who have subscription tv just for sports would be able to combine saorview and freesat and still get the sports through RTÉ for much less and this would also bring loads of money into RTÉ and finally have a decent irish channel. I also think that Setanta should be introduced into saorview but i would love to hear peoples thoughts on this to see if its a terrible idea or if people think its good because i personally would definately go for an option thatd save money!

It would be great but wont happen. When you say minor GAA do you mean u18 or just club games in general. Setanta needs to be subscription to pay for itself so it can run what it has so it wont be added to Saorview.
These ideas wouldn't save money and if such a channel came into being it wouldn't be that cheap.

Amirani

Where would RTÉ get the 9 or 10 figure sum required to bid for Premier League rights? How could that be profitable given their very limited potential viewership?

Kermit.de.frog

Diego Simeone wrote: »

Where would RTÉ get the 9 or 10 figure sum required to bid for Premier League rights? How could that be profitable given their very limited potential viewership?

They would not need anywhere near as much money though for a market as small as Ireland.

spudato7

The Lost Sheep wrote: »

It would be great but wont happen. When you say minor GAA do you mean u18 or just club games in general. Setanta needs to be subscription to pay for itself so it can run what it has so it wont be added to Saorview.
These ideas wouldn't save money and if such a channel came into being it wouldn't be that cheap.

Could setanta not be added to saorview? and I would like to see u18 and normal
club level football i think it would a great idea

The Lost Sheep

spudato7 wrote: »

Could setanta not be added to saorview? and I would like to see u18 and normal
club level football i think it would a great idea

No it couldn't. It needs to be pay per view to fund it. Under 18 club football will never be shown as there isn't enough interest. Club level games are shown on tg4 when it gets to end of year and competitions coming to a conclusion

spudato7

Diego Simeone wrote: »

Where would RTÉ get the 9 or 10 figure sum required to bid for Premier League rights? How could that be profitable given their very limited potential viewership?

Would it really be that much?? I thought because it was Ireland the cost of the broadcasting rights would be cheaper than most places seeing as the only irish broadcaster that has any premier league football is setanta and they only have one game so there wouldnt be any competition?

spudato7

The Lost Sheep wrote: »

No it couldn't. It needs to be pay per view to fund it. Under 18 club football will never be shown as there isn't enough interest. Club level games are shown on tg4 when it gets to end of year and competitions coming to a conclusion

But up north people can add bt sport to freeview through use of a smart card im nearly 100% sure of that

icdg

spudato7 wrote: »

But up north people can add bt sport to freeview through use of a smart card im nearly 100% sure of that

No, not usually. There are terrestrial feeds of BT Sport, but they are only available to certain subscribers of BT TV in areas where fibre to the cabinet is not available. Everyone else is expected to use broadband, satellite, or cable to view the service.

In any respect, calling such a service (or the old Top-up TV service, for that matter) part of "Freeview" is seriously abusing the term "Freeview".

(I'd also rather people stop abusing the term pay-per-view. Pay per view - where one pays for an individual programme - is only used in this jurisdiction for some boxing and professional wrestling cards. Everything else is subscription. One pays a monthly fee for the channel, but can watch as many programmes as they want while subscribed.).

In any case RTÉ would not be allowed to run such a channel itself. RTÉ Commercial Enterprises might, but such a channel would definitely not be allowed
receive licence fee funding. Also if you think the storm over Sky Sports showing a small number of GAA fixtures is bad just think of what it would be like if the whole thing went to a pay-TV channel, irrespective of if it was Irish owned.

pa990

spudato7 wrote: »

Does nobody else think that it would be a great idea for RTÉ to release a payTV channel ....

NO

FRIENDO

spudato7 wrote: »

Does nobody else think that it would be a great idea for RTÉ to release a payTV channel for sports

NO.
We get lots of Great FREE Sport on RTE and on other Free channels.
If a pay channel was introduced by RTE it would most likely see the free sport moved to the pay station.

No such thing as a "small Fee", People will not or may not be able to pay.

Sam Russell

There is no way RTE could be involved in this.

Setanta might, but it could only be done by way of an HD channel (costing €2m a year) and the content being mostly free, cost of free stuff covered by advertising. Premium content encrypted for defined periods (like Saturday afternoons and perhaps certain events). Say 10% of households went for it, that is 150,000 viewers at €25/year is only €3.7m so would hardly cover transmission costs, let alone presentation and rights. Not on.

TAFKAlawhec

The idea of a European PSB running a dedicated sports channel is not exactly unheard of - off the top of my head TVE (Spain), RAI (Italy), ORF (Austria) CT (Czech Rep) & NERIT (Greece) run their own sports channels although I think TVE were considering closing theirs down. In any case, all these channels are available free-to-air in their respective countries and in general cover either more minor sports or minor competitions in more popular sports - CT's sports channel has some good programming though as they show the likes of the UEFA Champions League as well as covering the recent FIFA World Cup.

A similar proposition in Ireland for RTÉ - would funding permit, and with RTÉ's finances that pretty much a non starter right now - could only really work as a free-to-air channel covering a lot of Irish sporting events. In fact, to bulk the channel up they would have to try and swallow up a lot of TG4's sporting coverage involving the likes of Gaelic games, rugby etc. with currently would be a wasteful movement of resources between PSB's in the state and force TG4 to fill their schedules with other material that would be unlikely to bring in as big an audience for advertisers etc.

An RTÉ run pay-tv sports channel would be even more of a non-starter. As ICDG points out, it would have to be run as a completely commercial outfit, it would have to almost certainly siphon off from current sporting coverage RTÉ already provides on its network, and in some cases it could struggle to gain clearance rights on some platforms - for example imagine such a channel bought a majority share of the live EPL broadcast rights for the Republic of Ireland, coverage on satellite (at least on 28 East) could end up seeing quite a few people in the UK trying to get their hands on grey-subscriptions if the cost for watching the games compared favourably to Sky or BT, which Sky would unlikely tolerate, so you'd be restricted to cable/MMDS and maybe terrestrial only.

There are quite a few things that could change & shake up things at Donnybrook, but entering the pay-TV market isn't likely to be one of them.

The Cush

TAFKAlawhec wrote: »

The idea of a European PSB running a dedicated sports channel is not exactly unheard of - off the top of my head TVE (Spain), RAI (Italy), ORF (Austria) CT (Czech Rep) & NERIT (Greece) run their own sports channels although I think TVE were considering closing theirs down.

Spain's RTVE has closed down its sports channel Teledeporte on DTT to become an online streaming channel. Some of its programming will transfer to the second national channel La2.

This happened because RTVE almost went bust but was saved by a €130m cash injection from the government. They plan to save another €50m from their budget and cut 500 employees this year.