I notice that the Entertainment pack on BTTV has been reduced to £9( subject to the annual price rise) for the duration of the 24 month contract. This isn’t quite as good as the £6 offer that was available in April. However, as the new Asian Mix pack is an add on, it would need to be taken with a flexible tv pack.
A poster on another forum who subscribes to Sky Sports directly with NOW has stated that they tried to persuade him to renew @ full price, but suggested that he could drop Boost when he went online to renew as he was entering the final month of his current deal with them. This would certainly fit with the rumour of Sky Sports 4K being introduced on NOW from September to those direct subscribers paying full price (currently £33.99 per month). He declined on two occasions and held out for another deal.
Honestly, why would Sky put their premium services at risk (Q and Glass), by offering UHD sport via their budget PAYG platform NOW?
On the flip side, who is stupid enough to pay £33.99 + £5 for Boost a month just for sport in UHD when you can get access to the same content much cheaper?
I pay the equivalent of £16 for Sky Sports on Q in UHD, it’s currently £17.50 per month on Glass including the UHD and Dolby Atmos pack.
All power to BT if they have done a deal that gets access to it, but they will have to do a decent package deal for customers to make it attractive.
@stereohaven simple really., Sky are recognising that they're very vulnerable at the moment because over the next couple of years they are running a very high risk of losing a lot of their premium content with the various direct subscription apps. The biggest threat bar none is Discovery-Warner as they're responsible for most of Sky premium scripted drama through the HBO deal. That expires in a couple of years and Discovery-Warner are pretty much nailed on to not renew. Discovery-Warner also now have a 50% share in BT Sport and 100% ownership of Eurosport, so I'd expect them to go for pan-European F1 rights as a minimum. Sky must also be pooping themselves over the next Premier League bids because Amazon could up their bids and again, BT Sport & Discovery-Warner could be in for more Premier League....
It's all looking very shaky for Comcast/Sky
I agree that Sky is already repositioning itself as an aggregator of content, but that doesn’t mean they will provide access to UHD content on their budget platform. They are very different business decisions.
My point was that if they did, it would be such an expensive way to buy it, why would you?
Your best hope is that BT have got access to it and can create discounted packages to make it more palatable for their customers.
I know you hang your hat on Sky loosing everything and the new WBD being a massive competitor, which it might, but I repeat, Sky is already the dominant European platform and that is not what the evidence suggests.
If you look at the earnings call for WBD this week they confirmed:
You should check out some of the coverage as it also confirmed HBO Max and Discovery+ being merged, just not here yet.
The Chief executive David Zaslav was quite clear about the need for fiscal responsibility after posting a $3.4 billion first quarter loss and he loves the cheap reality programmes that Discovery produces, not expensive quality shows like those on HBO or over inflated sports rights.
They are the stone cold business facts at this time, whatever we all may think or feel or want.
Of course, it’s all speculation at the moment still. However, it does make sense to me if it does happen. BT Sport have got exclusivity on CL, EL & ECL for another two seasons. From 2024/25 until 2026/27 BT Sport will still have all of the live games with the exception of the first pick game on Tuesday night for the CL. If they’ve done a deal with BT to make each other’s 4K sport content available and making it available to direct NOW customers by insisting that they pay full price, I can understand why they would do that.
Honestly, I hope you are correct, it benefits both sets of customers, but the pricing has to be right.
@stereohaven an article that was ran in May last year on pocket-lint claimed that 4K was going to be included in the HD Boost.
Yes, and you would need to pay full price, no discounts, which would make Sky Sports UHD via NOW £38.99 per month.
As per @Brucemeister5, I can see the odd customer taking a punt on that for very occasional viewing, but you need it cheaper if it comes to BT as part of a package deal.
Or for £74 a month, you go VIP with BT and get Sky Sports, BT Sport with Ultimate, Eurosport, Netflix, Entertainment , Sky Cinema, HD Boost... Just need to chip in an extra £6 for Netflix 4K... Oh and we got 6 months at half price... All in all, not a bad little deal when you average the monthly cost out over the 2 years 👌