"Cost of watching live football to be slashed"

omen666

whatmichaelsays wrote: »

But it was sold on the condition of a USO (Universal Service Obligation). BSkyB was built from the ground up. BT (in its current guise) wasn't.

As I said earlier, if BT is so interested in live sport, they should be putting their money where their mouth is. There was a bundle of rights going cheap following the Setanta collapse - where were they then?

BT are effectively trying to start a war but wanting to use their opponents weapons. Murdoch has already made his stance clear on people who simply want to distribute his content for their own gain (see Google News, NewNow and the Virgin / Sky One saga). If BT and Virgin Media want to take him on, good luck to them but I suspect that they'll soon have to find their own content from somewhere in the long term (and as "media companies", shouldn't they be making their own content in the first place?).

I know some of this will come across as somebody who works in the Sky press office (I don't) but Sky has sunk its money into infrastructure, rights and production. It is a lifeline for the majority of professional sports and has been the key economic driver behind the huge improvements that we have seen in facilities for sportsmen, women and spectators. If somebody else wants a piece of the pie, fine. Just don't expect other people to do the work for you.

totally agree with all your posts on this

will-in-estoril

1. $ky will fight this tooth and nail. They could be compelled to lower their wholesale prices, but at no time soon and not before the highest court in the land has ruled, I daresay!
2. Anyone who thinks NDS Videoguard will be hacked is living in cloud cuckoo land. More and more broadcasters are switching to this form of encryption, along with Nagra 3 and Viacess 3.0
3. There are alternatives to $ky. Unfortunately, Sky digiboxes were so manufactured that they make reception from non Astra 2 channels anything from not user friendly to impossible.