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BT to sell Sky Sports 1 and 2 on BT Vision IPTV platform
Monday 28 June 2010 11:23:05 by John Hunt

BSkyB and BT have announced the signing of a contract to provide Sky Sports channels to BT customers. The deal will allow BT Vision customers to watch the channels from 1st of August, in time for the start of the Premier League football season which starts later in the month. The deal follows a 3 year review and ruling by Ofcom in March which forced Sky to reduce the costs at wholesale of selling its Sports channels. Sky set out an appeal to suspend the Ofcom ruling whilst it prepared a full appeal which it thought might take around 9 months to complete. Ofcom agreed to this which would see other TV operators pay full price with some money placed in an escrow account pending the appeal.

"We are delighted to have reached this milestone, which means that we can be certain of offering Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 to our customers before the football season kicks off. We know our customers will be keen to sign up for the two channels."

Gavin Patterson ,(Chief Executive) BT Retail

Although BT have announced the new channels will be available on their BT Vision IPTV platform, they have yet to provide pricing details for the service.

[ Topic: Content | 16 comments | link to this item ]

Comments

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
Simple solution for Sky is just move premiership footy and other big events to their HD channels only.
Looking forward to see if BT charge less than Sky though, they have no excuse if they dont.

Posted by timmay about 1 year ago
Completely pointless. If you want Sky TV get Sky TV. Shame you have to have BT broadband for their TV service.

Posted by mattbibby about 1 year ago
Good move..

Although many may not agree I think Sky should be broken up just like other businesses (Including BT) have.

You'd have Sky Broadcasting & Sky Retail..

Sky Broadcasting being the wholesaler of media content and Sky Retail selling the satellite service.

There has to be some level playing fields made for media to ensure the technology advances and the consumer conties to get good value for money.

Posted by Dixinormous about 1 year ago
There's nothing stopping other companies for bidding on the various rights packages that Sky have.

BT have not been broken up and the structural separation is there due to them being a natural monopoly, nothing at all stopping a new entrant from competing with Sky.

All this would do would be to punish Sky for investing and reduce the incentive to invest in sports rights, lowering the quality of the product. Sky's production values are high precisely because of their position, take that away you lose the technological advances, they no longer have any incentive.

Posted by m0aur about 1 year ago
The whole idea of paying anyone for Sky Sport seems a little silly to me, when it can be watched for free on the web.

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
Well said Dixinormous couldnt have agreed more :)

Posted by ETEE about 1 year ago
Sky Sports 1 & 2 will not be broadcast on IpTV as the article title suggests. This is a "Freeview" service which will be broadcast via digital terrestrial TV transmitters like ESPN is. BT Vision uses a mixture of Freeview and ipTV to provide its offerings. Pay TV channels are encrypted.

Posted by AndrueC about 1 year ago
@Dix:Well said. It's not even as if Sky is currently a monopoly. It has several competitors. It doesn't even broadcast most of the channels available on its system.

/But/ I would also say that some sports governing bodies are asking for too much money and/or paying their overblown, egotistical players far too much money. Whether Sky is complicit in that or not I don't know.

Posted by webadmin247 about 1 year ago
They need a degree of separation like Openreach. If they can manage a billion pound fibre upgrade, surely proof it doesn’t diminish ability to develop "technological advances". SKY has been determined to have SMP status in paytv market. Also, no one can deny the 'exclusive' arrangements they have tied into their deals to lock out other bidders. With regards to Sport, they know they have the backing of one of the world's richest men .. who is also their founding chairman. Football rights in particular are a means to an end for this company - not out of some ill perceived 'love' of the game.

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
quote"They need a degree of separation like Openreach."

Funniest comment ever.

Posted by xb0xguru about 1 year ago
webadmin247 - The day we penalise private sector companies for succeeding on subscriber funded flagship content will be a very sad day indeed. OfCom need taking out and shooting for meddling into the affairs of the private sector, especially since they use our money to lavishly kit out their offices in doing so.

Posted by sylvantos about 1 year ago
and yet as a virgin media customer on the XL package we get the exact same price as it always was with them. The only slight and I mean sligh benefit is if your on the lowest package. So much for fighting for fairness when the prices havent remotely come down. The more you pay for your package the less you get with virgin and I suspect BT too.

Posted by sylvantos about 1 year ago
"There's nothing stopping other companies for bidding on the various rights packages that Sky have."
Actually you will find a lot of media companies will look at sky and tell them to keep it. The prices are extortionate. The point being why should people be forced to pay rip off sky for something they dont want? Cable while not being cheaper is light years ahead of those clowns in many ways. Better HD service which is free to V+ customers. Sky without the footie would have died years ago.

Posted by sunter18 about 1 year ago
Heard the other day on BBC that Sky are putting up the price of their own subscriptions so they can charge BT more, not sure how that will work :(

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
quote"Heard the other day on BBC that Sky are putting up the price of their own subscriptions so they can charge BT more, not sure how that will work :("

Quite well i would imagine..... Sky will lose customers, thus buy less content, thus have less to sell to BT, thus BT a year on wont be interested in paying them at all anymore..... and then things can get back to normal with Sky being the only ones with balls enough to lavish cash on big sporting events and put prices back down to grab back all those that left and all those that will no longer have Sky sports through BTs service.

Posted by CARPETBURN about 1 year ago
Short term loss for long term gain, a common and smart business practice...... Upsets the customers in the beginning but blame ofcom for that for allowing this mickey mouse game.