Sky sports rebrand

[andystockbvb]

MadRob - Are BT trying to get fewer of thier subscribers to purchase sky channels as a bolt on. BT know Sky are paying for that huge PL contract while vieeing figuers have dropped 15%.

[mccallud]

Well 1st impression this morning is this is rubbish!

Sky Sports Main event is fine but Sky Sports Extra was showing nothing at all at 7:30AM this morining so think this will be a waste of money . Can you buy just Sky Sport Main Event and not the Extra channel ?

[gomezz]

Presumably they were intending to show the last day of the test match today? 😞

Edit:  Just checked RT listings and it was due to be on Main Event.

[scointer]

I don't think we can blame SKY or BT for the England Cricket Team's poor performance 😉

The bonus with BT is you can turn on and off with 30 days notice, a bit like NowTV but with BT you get full HD and Recordability. I know there are discounts to be had but who is to say if this isn't just a BT decision on the pricing they may also look at discounts going forward, just throwing it out there....

At the end of the day at the minute BT make no profit on SKY Sports channels so in their eyes they would be quite happy for everyone to drop it, if they now decide to make a small profit and keep it available on their platform and then give themselves some room to manoeuvre on pricing, thier only danger is people leave their platform altogether because of the sports pricing. I would imagine the people actually taking SKY Sports on their platform is small enough to take this risk.

Although this is bad news for the customer it could actually prove to be quite a clever business decision by BT. Only time will tell I suppose.

[MadRob]

@andystockbvb. Yes I think BT are hoping to play Sky at their own game. Surely the majority of Sky Sports subbers on BT will now be cancelling those channels (take up on BT was very small anyway for Sky Sports).

@mccallud. Extra is not a channel per se. It will only ever be in use to show a live EPL match if it clashes with something else on Main Event. Nothing else will be shown there. You can't choose to only have Main Event as that is effectively the only channel we are now getting anyway. Basically that is the package, one channel, Main Event, with Extra only broadcast for sporadic Premier League matches.

[LesC]

No recordability with NowTV is a minor annoyance as I guess most of us prefer to watch sport live anyway but what is annoying is that with BT, we'd now get just one sky sports channel as opposed to all for them for virtually the same price.

Therefore there's amost certainly going to be times where you'll miis something for examples with today's listings there's Twenty20 cricket on Sky Cricket but not on Main Event before the change it would most likely to have been on SS2. And with NowTV you'll always get all the F1 races too.

As others have suggested, it's beginning to look like BT want to force subscribers to drop their Sky Sports channels

[Melchet]

This seems a much less attractive deal for Sky Sports customers on BT TV. Not only has the price increased from £27.00 to £33.50 for the two HD sports channels, but there is also less content. Sky Sports Main Event may be an acceptable substitute for Sky Sports 1 but the same cannot be said for Sky Sports Extra as a substitute for Sky Sports 2. Sky Sports Extra will be largely off-air as it is only activated for Premier League action that is not already covered by Sky Sports Main Event. At least I have the option to cancel my BT subscription to Sky Sports without penalty.

[LesC]

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@Melchet wrote:
 At least I have the option to cancel my BT subscription to Sky Sports without penalty.

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I presume we all do?

[andystockbvb]

£33.50 a month and there is no app you can watch it while away from home. At least with Now TV you can use the now TV app while away from home.

[andy_m1]

I guess the thinking is that if you've chosen BT as your provider you've already decided to do with either a watered down version of Sky Sports, or without it at all. If they had been subsidising it to the tune of roughly £5 per month and have decided not to do so any longer then maybe it does point to an effort to be done with it altogether.

What sticks in the throat a bit is the line from BT that the price increase and the Sky Sports Main Event/Sky Sports Extra "change is happening across all TV providers" which simply isn't true. ***EDITED***