Sky Sports Going Downhill?

mikeym

For a big sports channel why arent they showing any Pre-Season Friendlies?

IMO its embarrassing that Sky Sports news show the International Champions Cup clips with Premier Sports on the top right hand corner.

Sky Sports Football is very poor value for money in the summer nobody wants to watch the MLS at 3am in the morning.

With La Liga going to Eleven Sports what other Competitions or Leagues will Sky lose in the future?

People pay over €1000 a year for the pleasure to watch Sky Sports and it offers nothing during the Summer months for the football fan.

Pussyhands

Sky still hsve the best Premier league coverage. I do love their coverage but i don't pay for it.

fman

They've never been big on pre season friendlies. They did have the ICC a few years back but like so many of their non PL rights, it slipped away.
It really is a house of cards built on the premier league now.

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

lertsnim

They've lost far too much now to be considered value for money. Then I don't think they've been value for money for a long time. Their treatment of so called lesser sports is awful when they put them on red button streams meaning no HD.

The channel rebrand from last year has been a disaster as they are after limiting themselves to how much can be shown live on the main channels.

fman

Would very much agree with that. You get the case of chasing something around the red button, even when some of the themed channels have nothing live. Probably one of the worst decisions they have made and I still don't understand main event just showing what's on one of the other channels.

Doodah7

mikeym wrote: »

For a big sports channel why arent they showing any Pre-Season Friendlies?

IMO its embarrassing that Sky Sports news show the International Champions Cup clips with Premier Sports on the top right hand corner.

Sky Sports Football is very poor value for money in the summer nobody wants to watch the MLS at 3am in the morning.

With La Liga going to Eleven Sports what other Competitions or Leagues will Sky lose in the future?

People pay over €1000 a year for the pleasure to watch Sky Sports and it offers nothing during the Summer months for the football fan.

Because there is more to sport than soccer perhaps?? Yesterday alone there was GAA hurling, Formula 1, cricket, darts, showjumping and golf that I can remember off the top of my head.

Don't get me wrong, Sky Sports is a shadow of its former self and it is only really keeping its head above water with its PL package. Any further erosion of this and they will be in trouble. However it personally bugs me that so many people only see the value of a sports channel through the prism of soccer coverage. Watch something else!! You might enjoy it!!

dulpit

I think the big problem that is becoming more and more apparent is that people only seem willing to subscribe to sports channels in large numbers for Soccer. So all the money they spend on other sports is a bonus for those subscribers, but won't drive subscribers directly. When their soccer coverage begins to split between all the players (currently it's a mess of Sky, Eir, Eleven & Virgin in Ireland; Sky, Eleven and BT in UK) it becomes clear that people don't care about the other sports.

I know monopolies are inherently bad, but the fragmentation of sports rights between various pay operators is a bad thing. Maybe the likes of a Eurosport could pick up more in the long run?

Maybe if we ended up with a more American model of sports channels (they are basic channels or in the higher tier, but not pay per channel - so similar to Eurosport now on Sky) that'll help?

Schwanz

Sky's 20 quid per month sports package is very telling, losing the Spanish league has to have hurt them massively, also the emergence of these online broadcasters are sure too to dent them even further.

it's well worth 20 quid but anything over 30 is a rip off imo

icdg

The fact is that the Premier League is *the* driver of subscriptions to Sky Sports. That’s why Sky are willing to overspend on it and give up other rights. No other property matters like the Premier League does and everything else is peripheral in comparison.

Re the American model, it’s to be remembered that both the sports rights market and the structure of pay TV is very different over there. Firstly, sports leagues value FTA coverage a lot more. The NFL hasnt signed an exclusive deal with one provider and instead has deals with three free to air networks (NBC, CBS and Fox) and two pay TV networks (ESPN and NFLN). The majority of games air free to air. All the other major leagues use a mix of free to air and pay TV. The only major league to have made its primary outlet pay TV is the NHL, but only in Canada, and even then some FTA coverage has been maintained.

The other thing to note is that while sports channels in the US tend to be “basic” or “medium” tier packages rather than premium, Americans pay premium rates for the likes of HBO, Showtime and other channels whose U.K. equivalents would be basic tier (eg Sky Atlantic).

holy guacamole

Patww79 wrote: »

I've been meaning to cancel for a long time now as every time I stick it on there's nothing I want and the same thing on about three channels simultaneously.

This is my main issue with Sky Sports at the moment. I'm so sick of checking if there's anything on and being greeted by cricket on each of the first three Sports channels. I know there's probably people who only subscribe to certain sports channels and this caters for them, but if you have all the channels it only serves to remind you what a waste of money the full package is.

Even then, if they had something decent to show it might not be so bad. But aside from the PL, the Championship, the NFL in winter, and the odd hurling game in the summer, their line-up is looking very threadbare. Even things like boxing, which they used to do very well, have almost completely disappeared from their roster.

Realalemadrid

When I read the thread title I must admit I saw a new channel : Sky Sports Skiing.

namloc1980

Sky Sports have gone all in on the premier league at this stage AND netball, truly awful sport.

robbiep958

Anyone paying for sky sports over the summer need there head examimed . Lots of **** old replays and hardly any live sport .

Dont even speak about cricket . Surely has to be one of the worst sports and sky dedicated a channl for that crap

icdg

Some of do like the Southern Hemisphere rugby and the GAA.

Look, the footballs back tomorrow (well the EFL anyway), normal service about to resume.

Digifriendly

Great golf on Sky Sports - 3 tournaments in Europe covered last week. Also some great Super Rugby and Rugby Championship to come as well as start of PL. Summer hasn't ended yet.

I'd say Sky is already getting its wagons in a circle and preparing for the rights battle for the 2022-25 PL seasons. I think a massive challenge is coming from Facebook or some similar entity whose primary means of delivery will be online. The Spring of 2021 could be very interesting!

OneEightSeven

Deleted User wrote: »

I'd say Sky is already getting its wagons in a circle and preparing for the rights battle for the 2022-25 PL seasons. I think a massive challenge is coming from Facebook or some similar entity whose primary means of delivery will be online. The Spring of 2021 could be very interesting!

In 3 years time, Britain will be long gone from the EU and the Premier League should be allowed to sell exclusive broadcasting rights to just one broadcaster, but since Ireland still falls under the EU monopoly rules it should be interesting to see what happens here.

icdg

The Premier League’s 2006 commitments to the Commission ended in 2013. They still maintain the no single buyer rule, on voluntary basis, and an Ofcom investigation in 2016 found no basis to intervene.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2016/premier-league-football-rights

In general the no single buyer rule, far from being a heavy imposition by the Commission that the Premier League would seek to be free of, has worked out better than its wildest dreams. It has kept Sky on its toes, created a viable competitor that could potentially take rights off it, and ultimately assured the Premier League of substantial increases in revenue (which is all the Premier League cares about really. They have no particular loyalty to Sky).

I don’t want to talk too much about Brexit, because no one really knows what Brexit means, and there is a politics forum where that can be debated until the cows come home (and is being). But speaking purely from the issue you raised, if/when Brexit happens, the entire acquis communitaire will continue to apply to the UK until and if the UK legislature individually decides to repeal any individual piece of legislation. You are presupposing (a) that competition law will be among the first pieces of legislation to be repealed (b) the replacement legislation will be much more favourable to monopolists and (c) the Premier League is anxious to revert to a single supplier. Even if (a) and (b) did happen (and that is already two massive ifs) I’ve already explained why (c) will not. In fact in the recent auction the Premier League have gone, voluntarily, to three rights holders. No one told them to do that, not the Commission, not Ofcom.

iseegirls

Only 1 live football game on Sky Sports Mix over the next month - Northern Ireland v Israel.

What an absolute waste of a channel.

Cork Boy 53

iseegirls wrote: »

Only 1 live football game on Sky Sports Mix over the next month - Northern Ireland v Israel.

What an absolute waste of a channel.

I`m sure there will be plenty of other sports on Sky Sports Mix. Nobody ever stated that only football would be broadcast on that channel. Anyway Sky Sports have two dedicated channels for it as it is.

OldMrBrennan83

I turned it on yesterday and there was the same cricket on two channels, the same golf on two channels, and the same eSports FIFA on two channels, while the remaining one had some generic ATP tour magazine show. Final straw and one phone call later I now have 360Mb broadband for the same price I was spending on the package.

Digifriendly

iseegirls wrote: »

Only 1 live football game on Sky Sports Mix over the next month - Northern Ireland v Israel.

What an absolute waste of a channel.

Sky Sports Mix by its very name is a mix of sports not just football. If I wete you I would consider subscribing to Sky Sports if you want to see more football as they ate offering deals at present.

Minderbinder

So the main complaint here is that they’re not showing glorified football training exercises during the summer?

I think they’re showing most relevant, competitive sport over the summer that they can show. They show the Rugby test matches, most of the golf, a lot of tennis, cricket, rugby league, F1, GAA. I think they’re actually significantly better during the summer than they used to be when they didn’t have F1, GAA, the Open, for example.

What summer events have they lost that they had before?

icdg

Yeah, that’s effectively the complaint.

Look there’s two live EFL games, Soccer Saturday and two live MLS games today, tomorrow you’ve live SPFL, EFL, and more MLS. What’s that I hear you say, you demand the Premier League. Look it’s not Sky’s fault they take a three month break. But you’ve not long to wait until Man United v Leicester on Friday at 8pm.

Cork Boy 53

Minderbinder wrote: »

So the main complaint here is that they’re not showing glorified football training exercises during the summer?

I think they’re showing most relevant, competitive sport over the summer that they can show. They show the Rugby test matches, most of the golf, a lot of tennis, cricket, rugby league, F1, GAA. I think they’re actually significantly better during the summer than they used to be when they didn’t have F1, GAA, the Open, for example.

What summer events have they lost that they had before?

The only one that comes to mind is the US PGA Golf, but then they have broadcast the Open since 2016 so I guess it balances out.

Clareman

1 of the problems with Sky (in my opinion) is they just have too many sports channels now, 10 channels means 240 hours of programming EVERY DAY, they cant fill all of it and it just looks diluted, 3 or 4 Sports Channels with News would be more than enough, back in the day they used to show matches on Sky One if there was too much sport on the other channels.

Minderbinder

Cork Boy 53 wrote: »

Minderbinder wrote: »

So the main complaint here is that they’re not showing glorified football training exercises during the summer?

I think they’re showing most relevant, competitive sport over the summer that they can show. They show the Rugby test matches, most of the golf, a lot of tennis, cricket, rugby league, F1, GAA. I think they’re actually significantly better during the summer than they used to be when they didn’t have F1, GAA, the Open, for example.

What summer events have they lost that they had before?

The only one that comes to mind is the US PGA Golf, but then they have broadcast the Open since 2016 so I guess it balances out.

Yeah and even then they wanted to show that but for non-monetary reasons were refused.

Cork Boy 53

Minderbinder wrote: »

Yeah and even then they wanted to show that but for non-monetary reasons were refused.

There is also the US Open tennis which is now going to be broadcast on Amazon for at least the next five years.

xxyyzz

I had it primarily for the rugby coverage but they lost the pro 14 and the champions Cup this season so I'll be switching to bt/eir

fman

They didn't show the us open tennis last year either. Not sure if they had it the year before or not, can't remember.

Clareman

Just flicking through the sports channels now, there's a lack of sport to be fair

News - News
Main Event - Live Cricket
Football - Championship Season Review
Premier League - Goals 94/05
Arena - Live Rugby League
Action - Wrestling
Golf - WGC Highlights
F1 - Race Replay
Cricket - Live Cricket (same as Main Event)
Mix - Games of Change
Premier Sports - Track and Field
Premier 2 - Same as above
BT1 - Vanarama National League (I don't know what this is)
BT2 - MotoGP
BT3 - Gilette World Sport (used to love this on RTE years ago)
BT ESPN - Baselball talk
Eleven Sports - Darts
Eir - Sports
Eir2 - Champions Cup replay
Eurosport - Swimming
Eurosport2 - Cycling


Thats before any red buttons or club channels or horse racing or whatever. There isn't enough sport to go around

Cork Boy 53

Clareman wrote: »

Just flicking through the sports channels now, there's a lack of sport to be fair

News - News
Main Event - Live Cricket
Football - Championship Season Review
Premier League - Goals 94/05
Arena - Live Rugby League
Action - Wrestling
Golf - WGC Highlights
F1 - Race Replay
Cricket - Live Cricket (same as Main Event)
Mix - Games of Change
Premier Sports - Track and Field
Premier 2 - Same as above
BT1 - Vanarama National League (I don't know what this is)
BT2 - MotoGP
BT3 - Gilette World Sport (used to love this on RTE years ago)
BT ESPN - Baselball talk
Eleven Sports - Darts
Eir - Sports
Eir2 - Champions Cup replay
Eurosport - Swimming
Eurosport2 - Cycling


Thats before any red buttons or club channels or horse racing or whatever. There isn't enough sport to go around

Only about half of those on the above list are Sky Sports channels which is what this thread is about.

icdg

Indeed.

Look, I think there’s a lesson to be learnt here. People have different priorities when it comes to sport and a tendency to say if the sports they don’t like aren’t on, there’s “nothing” on.

There’s been plenty on Sky Sports throughout the summer. Golf including three of the four majors (and the Ryder Cup still to come). Every Formula One race. Cricket may not be popular in this country, but it is to rural England what the GAA is to rural Ireland, and Sky have to think of their customers there too. Ditto for rugby league, massive in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and parts of Lancashire. Not so popular anywhere else, but Sky have a legion of subscribers in Northern England subscribed. For rugby union fans, they’ve had nearly every Super Rugby game, including a thrilling final this morning. And let’s not forget of Irish interest, the GAA championships.

Look, we know the Premier League is the driver of Sky Sports subscriptions. It keeps Sky in business like no other sport, or even football competition, does. So it’s easy to say, if it’s your only interest, that “nothings” on Sky during the summer. I expect though, if that’s the case, you probably wouldn’t have been looking at Sky anyway for most of the summer, given that there was a certain major event in Russia that the stars of the Premier League were all at and was pretty entertaining.

Tigerandahalf

Most people watching the premier league are die hard club fans who want to watch their own team every week. Sky Sports are not offering that so their model will fail. Streaming is the future where all games will be live on demand. Sky Q's streaming product may cater for that but the Premier League/FA will have to see what the fan wants or subscriptions will continue to fall.

Incidentally eir sports will be streaming all of the pro14 games so they are ahead of the game. I presume the Yanks are already doing it.

icdg

The Premier League do not want that model for very good reasons, including the fact that once you had a “team pass” model and could know exactly what teams command what support among subscribers, the pressure from the most supported teams to begin selling their own broadcast rights would be irresistible. Once that happens, see the already wide gap between the Man Uniteds and Liverpool’s and the Bournemouth’s and Burnley’s become so wide that being in the same league no longer makes sense. Then it’s European Super League time.

icdg

icdg wrote: »

The Premier League do not want that model for very good reasons, including the fact that once you had a “team pass” model and could know exactly what teams command what support among subscribers, the pressure from the most supported teams to begin selling their own broadcast rights would be irresistible. Once that happens, see the already wide gap between the Man Uniteds and Liverpool’s and the Bournemouth’s and Burnley’s become so wide that being in the same league no longer makes sense. Then it’s European Super League time.

The PL don't want that model, but Sky themselves do operate a sort of 'sports pass' model to their UK subscribers in that you can get a PL dedicated channel etc and not have to take the other sports channels. I think it's scandalous that this system is not offered to the RoI subscriber base and that people here have to take all the sports channels.

Clareman

Cork Boy 53 wrote: »

Only about half of those on the above list are Sky Sports channels which is what this thread is about.

Very good point, what I was trying to show was that even if Sky had all the sport there'd barely be enough for them to fill the channels. I found it interesting when Murdoch was selling Fox he was quoted as saying that the only things people watch live anymore are Sports and News. Personally I find it very hard to watch any sport that isn't live, even avoiding scores to watch a recording is hard not to use the FF button, NFL Redzone is almost perfect TV for me and for the NFL season I tend to book the TV on a Sunday evening for that.

icdg

Deleted User wrote: »

The PL don't want that model, but Sky themselves do operate a sort of 'sports pass' model to their UK subscribers in that you can get a PL dedicated channel etc and not have to take the other sports channels. I think it's scandalous that this system is not offered to the RoI subscriber base and that people here have to take all the sports channels.

I think most people are agreed that it’s incredibly unfair that Sky offer that model in the UK but not Ireland, given that the product is identical. I’ve no answer for you on that one other than Sky obviously believes it doesn’t need to offer that pricing system in this market to retain subscribers.

Tigerandahalf

icdg wrote: »

I think most people are agreed that it’s incredibly unfair that Sky offer that model in the UK but not Ireland, given that the product is identical. I’ve no answer for you on that one other than Sky obviously believes it doesn’t need to offer that pricing system in this market to retain subscribers.

Sky aren't offering it as if they did nobody would take more than 3 channels - no cricket market in Ireland and even F1 is limited. The gaa and rugby they have tends to be on sky arena or action. They are already offering half price sports. I think if they offered hd free and multiroom for €10 max per extra room people would be more inclined to stay.

Facebook want a slice of the pie. Amazon won't be far behind surely.

dr.fuzzenstein

mikeym wrote: »

People pay over €1000 a year for the pleasure to watch Sky Sports and it offers nothing during the Summer months for the football fan.

That tells you everything you need to know about football.

Minderbinder

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

mikeym wrote: »

People pay over €1000 a year for the pleasure to watch Sky Sports and it offers nothing during the Summer months for the football fan.

That tells you everything you need to know about football.

Yes it tells us it’s incredibly popular and that they take a holiday during summer.

mikeym

For anyone that doesnt subscribe to Sky Sports the Man Utd - Leicester City match is on Sky 1.

fman

The debate simulcast on 4 sports channels tonight, second night in a row.

StringerBell

They have been going downhill for a few years now.

Digifriendly

fman wrote: »

The debate simulcast on 4 sports channels tonight, second night in a row.

I can only find 3 it is on via my Sky epg - Main Event/Premier League/ Football. Where is the 4th Channel?

fman

The always loved Mix.

dublinman1990

I heard something today that Sky's brand new PL studios. They are all new virtual setups in the football stadiums which feature either with or without flat panel screens on the walls. If a football presenter or analyst is giving their analysis on the matches; they either look up at the flat panels or pretend to look at something on the green screen or look from a small monitor in between the footage.

icdg

I saw it yesterday and thought they were at Iselworth. Not sure why they would even bother to be at the ground only to set up a virtual set like that.

lertsnim

It looks awful.