BT Sport - For Sale

[FairWeatherFan]

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/apr/29/bt-in-talks-to-sell-stake-in-bt-sport

https://www.ft.com/content/80c79e49-3f9b-4ca9-866c-9f39f38683c1

Not sure if it is being discussed on any random thread, but looks like BT might be cutting their losses on BT Sport by selling up entirely or at least stake in the business.

Either way is likely to have some repercussions and probably already has with how BT have been handling their business of late.

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

Anybody but ITV please.

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

Just now, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

Anybody but ITV please.

They nearly bankrupted English football 20 years ago with OnTV/ITV Digital, once bitten etc.

[Bishop Briggs]

Would Sky be allowed to buy its major competitor?

Amazon bought Eurosport recently and  has lots of cash to burn.

 

[Ray Patterson]

3 minutes ago, Bishop Briggs said:

Would Sky be allowed to buy its major competitor?

Amazon bought Eurosport recently and  has lots of cash to burn.

 

Discovery bought Eurosport recently, not Amazon.
 

[Ron Aldo]

If this puts Steve Mcmanaman and Martin Keown out of work it can only be a good thing.

[Guest TheJTS98]

On 30/04/2021 at 05:06, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

Anybody but ITV please.

According to Price of Football, ITV are interested in doing it free-to-air.

I fail to see how anybody could have any problem with that, regardless of how good or bad the actual shows are.

It'll be interesting to see where this leaves the televised football market. UEFA have already had the hump about shitey viewing figures for the Champions League on BT Sport, and even Sky's viewing figures for pretty big Premier League matches are nothing like what can be done on free-to-air.

Obviously, sponsors don't particularly like that, so it'll be intriguing to see if this represents a shift to a part-free-to-air model, which would be great news for football. It's bad for the sport for the biggest competitions to only be accessible to people with money.

But it's also bad for sponsors that relatively few people watch the competitions they pay to be associated with. Antiques Roadshow pulls in more viewers than the biggest Premier League games.

Liverpool away at Fulham in what was meant to be their title run-in in March 2019 got 1.5m on Sky. Milwall v Brighton in the FA Cup on the same day on BBC got 4.4m. Manchester United v Liverpool in February 2018 got 2.1m on Sky. Southampton v Man City got pushing three times that on BBC, despite being much lower profile. Liverpool's 4-0 v Barcelona was watched by a peak of 2.6m. Emmerdale does double that on a good night. BT Sport's audiences for lower profile Premier League games have often been in the low-ish six figures.

Antiques Roadshow gets 6 million. Football needs to be free-to-air.

Edited May 4, 2021 by TheJTS98

[ahemps]

6 hours ago, TheJTS98 said:

According to Price of Football, ITV are interested in doing it free-to-air.

I fail to see how anybody could have any problem with that, regardless of how good or bad the actual shows are.

It'll be interesting to see where this leaves the televised football market. UEFA have already had the hump about shitey viewing figures for the Champions League on BT Sport, and even Sky's viewing figures for pretty big Premier League matches are nothing like what can be done on free-to-air.

Obviously, sponsors don't particularly like that, so it'll be intriguing to see if this represents a shift to a part-free-to-air model, which would be great news for football. It's bad for the sport for the biggest competitions to only be accessible to people with money.

But it's also bad for sponsors that relatively few people watch the competitions they pay to be associated with. Antiques Roadshow pulls in more viewers than the biggest Premier League games.

Liverpool away at Fulham in what was meant to be their title run-in in March 2019 got 1.5m on Sky. Milwall v Brighton in the FA Cup on the same day on BBC got 4.4m. Manchester United v Liverpool in February 2018 got 2.1m on Sky. Southampton v Man City got pushing three times that on BBC, despite being much lower profile. Liverpool's 4-0 v Barcelona was watched by a peak of 2.6m. Emmerdale does double that on a good night. BT Sport's audiences for lower profile Premier League games have often been in the low-ish six figures.

Antiques Roadshow gets 6 million. Football needs to be free-to-air.

Surely there is marketing research into this and the broadcasters and football clubs know what makes the most money. Obviously free to air gets bigger viewers but that can't equate to more money?

There is PPV boxing that doesn't get big numbers but does give the boxers a bigger pay.

I'm sure the 6 nations is looking to go to subscription TV, again they will lose a large volume of viewers but the numbers (financially) must be appealing to them or it wouldn't be considered.

Another problem is too many options. I used to have Sky but now only have BT, I don't watch enough football on TV to justify more than 1 package and i have never looked at Premier or Amazon. It was great when Sky had everything and I would often watch La liga games, now I occasionally watch the Bundesliga and haven't seen a La Liga game for years. I don't even know where to see it, I think it might be on Premier nowadays. With DAZN coming to the party then it dilutes everything too much.

[Guest TheJTS98]

22 minutes ago, ahemps said:

Surely there is marketing research into this and the broadcasters and football clubs know what makes the most money. Obviously free to air gets bigger viewers but that can't equate to more money?

I'm not an expert, but it seems the objections to the pay-wall system are coming from sponsors.

Fag packet stuff, but how many viewers would Liverpool v Barcelona get on free-to-air tv primetime on a Wednesday. I'd wager a lot more than 2.6m, and associated ad space would be more valuable.

But I think the thing is, nobody is really sure how this works. There's an element of guesswork to the whole thing. John Nicholson quoted Niall Sloane, Head of ITV Sport as saying the following about tv viewing figures for paywall football:

"No-one in the football business understands, or wants to understand how low these figures are. They don't actually care is the truth because of the money they receive. ... Sky never, ever talk in terms of how many people are watching their output as it is all too paltry. It's been suggested they actually tell Talent and Staff that the true figure is 4x what BARB figures suggest".

The same guy said that Sky make it very hard to find out how many subscribers they have, which is interesting in itself, but the ITV view is that at best 25% of the population have Sky. And not all of them will have the sports package.

I'd instinctively share your view that there must be market research on this, but if the Super League fiasco has taught us anything, it's that a lot of things in football just run on assumptions, and often it doesn't really suit anyone to challenge the assumptions. What seems to be happening just now is that certain sponsors are getting the hump that their brand is being hidden behind a paywall that keeps audiences low. If sponsors start to get itchy about it, then maybe a more balanced model will be forced in.

I think the BT Sport experience has also shown us that, as per your last paragraph, there isn't the market for multiple subscriptions to watch football. BT just couldn't make it work and their viewing figures remained pish, even for their bigger games. There's only so much of an audience that is prepared to pay.

Edited May 4, 2021 by TheJTS98

[ahemps]

1 minute ago, TheJTS98 said:

I'm not an expert, but it seems the objections to the pay-wall system are coming from sponsors.

Fag packet stuff, but how many viewers would Liverpool v Barcelona get on free-to-air tv primetime on a Wednesday. I'd wager a lot more than 2.6m, and associated ad space would be more valuable.

But I think the thing is, nobody is really sure how this works. There's an element of guesswork to the whole thing. John Nicholson quoted Niall Sloane, Head of ITV Sport as saying the following about tv viewing figures for paywall football:

"No-one in the football business understands, or wants to understand how low these figures are. They don't actually care is the truth because of the money they receive. ... Sky never, ever talk in terms of how many people are watching their output as it is all too paltry. It's been suggested they actually tell Talent and Staff that the true figure is 4x what BARB figures suggest".

The same guy said that Sky make it very hard to find out how many subscribers they have, which is interesting in itself, but the ITV view is that at best 25% of the population have Sky. And not all of them will have the sports package.

I'd instinctively share your view that there must be market research on this, but if the Super League fiasco has taught us anything, it's that a lot of things in football just run on assumptions, and often it doesn't really suit anyone to challenge the assumptions. What seems to be happening just now is that certain sponsors are getting the hump that their brand is being hidden behind a paywall that keeps audiences low. If sponsors start to get itchy about it, then maybe a more balanced model will be forced in.

I hear a lot about data analysis and market research and I would think huge blue chip companies like Sky know exactly what viewers they have but also that companies who advertise like banks, car manufacturers, holiday companies, phone brands etc. should know that if they pay for advertising on Sky at a higher rate than ITV that it is paying off for them?  As you say why spend money on an advert at 8.45pm on Tuesday during Man City v PSG rather than after Emmerdale which may have twice the viewing figures, it would seem bizarre unless the advertising time is cheaper and Sky make up that money from subscribers????

Would be interesting to hear an expert on this. A question for price of football???

[Guest TheJTS98]

2 minutes ago, ahemps said:

I hear a lot about data analysis and market research and I would think huge blue chip companies like Sky know exactly what viewers they have but also that companies who advertise like banks, car manufacturers, holiday companies, phone brands etc. should know that if they pay for advertising on Sky at a higher rate than ITV that it is paying off for them?  As you say why spend money on an advert at 8.45pm on Tuesday during Man City v PSG rather than after Emmerdale which may have twice the viewing figures, it would seem bizarre unless the advertising time is cheaper and Sky make up that money from subscribers????

Would be interesting to hear an expert on this. A question for price of football???

Get writing.

It all seems very strange. The pay tv model makes sense if there are loads of subscribers and companies paying good money to advertise. But it just doesn't seem like either of those things are likely to exist at the moment. And if I'm a sponsor, I'd like to know why potential viewers are being encouraged to watch streams from foreign tv instead of the broadcast I'm paying for exposure on.

Sky's secrecy has never made sense to me. They're very coy about their numbers. Surely if they had loads of subscribers etc, they'd tell us all about it. A lot of this seems to be a repeat of the Super League stuff. The older I get, the less willing I am to believe these people know what they're doing.

[BigDoddyKane]

The Scottish league should look at giving away all the TV rights for free worldwide. Loads of TV/Sports Channels all trying to fill timeslots with content would pick up and show the games at some point if not live. Then charge a more money for the sponsors and advertising at the games and on the shirts.

A bit like free newspapers work

 

Or how about a joint TV package with multiple smaller domestic leagues joined up to sell their rights together in one package

 

probably both shite ideas but 

 

[Guest TheJTS98]

2 minutes ago, BigDoddyKane said:

The Scottish league should look at giving away all the TV rights for free worldwide. Loads of TV/Sports Channels all trying to fill timeslots with content would pick up and show the games at some point if not live. Then charge a more money for the sponsors and advertising at the games and on the shirts.

A bit like free newspapers work

 

Or how about a joint TV package with multiple smaller domestic leagues joined up to sell their rights together in one package

 

probably both shite ideas but 

 

Ideas all the same. Nobody else seems to have any.

And, that's pretty much what the Premier League did back in the early days. Punted foreign tv deals for hee haw and created a market they could later charge for.

I wouldn't have a problem with trying something like that. We're nowhere at the moment, so nothing to lose.

I believe Rangers did some kind of deal in India recently.

[BigDoddyKane]

7 minutes ago, TheJTS98 said:

Get writing.

It all seems very strange. The pay tv model makes sense if there are loads of subscribers and companies paying good money to advertise. But it just doesn't seem like either of those things are likely to exist at the moment. And if I'm a sponsor, I'd like to know why potential viewers are being encouraged to watch streams from foreign tv instead of the broadcast I'm paying for exposure on.

Sky's secrecy has never made sense to me. They're very coy about their numbers. Surely if they had loads of subscribers etc, they'd tell us all about it. A lot of this seems to be a repeat of the Super League stuff. The older I get, the less willing I am to believe these people know what they're doing.

Was Skys problem that they overpay for Football now because once they got it, it would go bust pretty quick without it. Its not so much amount of people watching it but that its reason a lot still pay for Sky

Edited May 4, 2021 by BigDoddyKane

[Guest TheJTS98]

3 minutes ago, BigDoddyKane said:

Was Skys problem that they overpay for Football now because once they got it, it would go bust pretty quick without it. Its not so much amount of people watching it but that its reason a lot still pay for Sky

We don't really know. Sky are too secretive to say either way.

[ahemps]

3 minutes ago, BigDoddyKane said:

The Scottish league should look at giving away all the TV rights for free worldwide. Loads of TV/Sports Channels all trying to fill timeslots with content would pick up and show the games at some point if not live. Then charge a more money for the sponsors and advertising at the games and on the shirts.

A bit like free newspapers work

Or how about a joint TV package with multiple smaller domestic leagues joined up to sell their rights together in one package

probably both shite ideas but 

 

It is ideas and it would be good if the people running the SPFL were sitting brainstorming and being inventive like this, sadly I think they are incapable of that. We can't be copying what the big 5 countries do with their TV deals but we kind of are and all we do is sell one fixture for our whole TV package, absolutely no effort to promote the game as a whole.

[Ludo*1]

This has been coming since they appointed Philip Jansen as their CEO. Gavin Patterson was massively into BT Sport and viewed that as BT's future if something happened down the line with Openreach being nationalised so invested massively into the sport side.

The Champions League has been a massive flop for BT and I remember they were punting it to people for free on top of broadband packages because UEFA were allegedly raging at the viewing figures. I worked in sales for 3 year and the push to sell Sport above anything else was incredible.

Since Philip Jansen has came in he's rolled back the investment. Think the clearest evidence of this was with the supposed lowball offer on SPFL rights when everyone was expecting them to be the accepted bid. They rolled back on the EPL rights and from my own personal experience, that was the only thing that people were really interested in purchasing BT Sports for.

[Michael W]

Is it really a surprise that numbers are guff? There's too much fragmentation between the subscription packages and it's just yet more expense. An Everton fan (for example) may well pay for Sky Sports as his own team will probably feature 9 or 10 times and the games of teams around Everton in the table or even the same league may be of interest too. 

For the Champions League, why would said Everton fan pay for this? His team isn't in the competition and the results have no bearing on his team. He may well watch it if it's free and there's nothing else to do, but when you're paying for it you need to first make the choice as to whether it's worth the hassle. 

From my own perspective, it is good to see the subscription model taking a beating for once. Get it up them. 

[invergowrie arab]

6 hours ago, Pato said:

Some crazy stats from Div:

 

I'm not sure I care about this as I wouldn't take out a sky or bt subscription with the expectation I would be able to watch United games (hence why I don't have either).

[sparky88]

I don't think it's possible to make money from broadcasting expensively acquired pay TV sport in the UK. Eleven, Setanta, ITV, ESPN and BT have all tried and failed. Sky is the obvious exception but even they have been stripping back sports rights especially in rugby and football the last few years,at the expense of investing more in non-sport content.