Yeah, either that or it's locked down somehow. It still seems a decent deal when you factor in the BT rewards card and topcashback but i don't think i'll factor in BT Sports into my decision. No chance i'm watching it on a phone. If only i'd bought an iPad with cellular!
Premier league now on Sky, BT and Amazon
- Thread starter Mr Blonde
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I had free bt sports app with my EE contract. I installed the bt sports app on my W10 laptop and connected to my TV via HDMI. Worked perfectly.
An OTT service requires significant investment and although Smart TV's are becoming more common 11 Sport showed with La Liga this season that overwhelmingly people still want to watch live sport on a comfy sofa in front of a big TV. To go exclusively OTT severely limits your market penetration.
Caporegime
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I don’t know one person without a smart TV now. Popping on the BT sport app on my Samsung is great. I can barely tell the difference between the stream and broadcast.
The PL will be aware of all the possible issues and we're probably still years away before we see them running something themselves but unless somebody like Amazon stump up a massive sum then it's coming eventually. If things go well in this current cycle then in 2 years then we're likely to see Amazon take more packages and one day, take the lot and if that goes well then where's the sense of the PL letting somebody else profit when they can take the whole thing themselves.
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You could just connect a chromecast like device if your tv doesnt have a smart TV functionality
I don't see it, they are losing the fight against piracy and IMO if subscription prices don't drop then the broadcasters will lose revenue and not pay as much for rights
This idea solves all those problems though. For arguments sake if Amazon were to buy all the rights in 2 years time, which they could potentially do with us leaving the EU, and offered you all 380 PL games per season for £250 then piracy figures would tumble. And then if in 5 or 8 years time the PL decide that they're capable of offering their own service and by cutting out Amazon they're able to reduce the cost of subscriptions from £250 to possibly as little as £100 per season then the numbers of people using illegal streams would become irrelevant.
This is 100% the future, it's just a case of how long it takes. If the PL were confident in the technology then in theory it could even happen in 2 years time but I suspect that they'll opt for the risk free guaranteed figure from a combination of Sky, BT and Amazon again (potentially with Amazon taking a bigger slice than now) but the potential revenue the League could generate by going it alone makes it an inevitability imo.
No, I don't mean that. As Rotty says, piracy is an issue because of the high prices that Sky and BT are charging. When you're subscribing to Sky and BT you're not just paying for PL football, you're paying for everything else that's included in your Sky/BT subscription, you're paying for the cost of Sky/BT running their whole operation and you're paying for the profit they make on top.
Straight away if the PL or any other broadcasting platform offered a straight PL only deal then there's no additional expense on other sports or entertainment packages that we might not want. I'm no expert on this but I'd guess the costs of running a streaming service won't be as much as running a satellite company either - there certainly won't be the equipment costs and engineer visits that will be factored into Sky's pricing at least. These things alone will mean that the PL or somebody like Amazon could offer PL football at a much lower price than it is now, without it effecting their bottom line. And because of the issues around piracy, it would make sense for them to do so - if the prices were more reasonable then piracy wouldn't be an issue and could potentially lead to huge increases in subscription numbers. In fact, for somebody like Amazon then lowering prices to increase subscription numbers, even to the point that it reduces their overall profit from the PL deal, could potentially make sense as the whole point of Amazon Prime is to get more people spending more on Amazon.
Caporegime
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While I think this is the way it’s going to go as well, I think you are being a bit too hopeful on the price.
I think the PL would charge a minimum of £30-40 a month for their own service.
I think the PL would charge a minimum of £30-40 a month for their own service.
Caporegime
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We are already paying that plus all the rubbish no one really wants. Only sports I watch are Motorsport and Football. Being able to pay only for football by itself would be awesome in my eyes. As long as it was no more than £15-20 a month.
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I
f you have all the services required to watch every televised match, it comes to a lot more than £30-40.
Caporegime
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Sky plus bt sport and Amazon is what £60 a month? It is also filled with plenty of other rubbish that you do not really need. I don't see Prime as a cost either. It's far more than that if you Amazon a lot.
I am sure if they made a pure football subscription service it would be cheaper.
I really don't think I am. It would be counter productive for them to price it that high. According to that video Sky have around 6m football subscribers and BT approx 2m - even assuming only half of those that sub to BT also sub to Sky, you've got just 7m households in the UK that are paying for PL football. If the PL tried to charge the same prices as Sky are charging now then they wouldn't even get the 6m subs Sky are getting because of all the added value and convenience Sky offer, let alone increase the number of subscribers.
We're not allowed to discuss it in detail but we know just from reading this forum during matches that a large number of supporters watch PL games via illegal methods and some of them are likely to be paying £5-10 per month to do so. If these people could watch PL football on a legal and reliable service for £10-15 per month then they would and you'd see a huge increase in subscribers that will more than make up for the lower subscription fee. You have to remember that this wouldn't be a UK only offering too. While there's supporters in the UK that would pay £40 per month, you're not going to have a significant number of supporters outside the UK that will and it's these people that will make up the bulk of the total number of subscribers.
Similar to the point I made about Amazon yesterday, there's even an arguement for the PL accepting less revenue to increase subscriber numbers. I'm sure if you offered PL clubs 200m subs at £10 per month (£24bn) or 110m subs at £20 per month (£26.4bn), they'd take the 200m subs because those extra 90m households viewing will increase the value of both advertisement on the channel but also individual commercial deals each club will sign.
What people aren’t figuring into the equation is the support costs and setup costs. If you’re servicing five million customers many of those will have problems or want to speak to someone. Doing it all online isn’t so easy and many won’t want that. Also setup costs are considerable and to get it running well even more so. But once this is all setup it could certainly be a money spinner. It’s if the PL actually want to do all this themselves. They’ve shown no interest in it so far.
If the PL could get anywhere near the £20bn per season revenue mark then the costs would be insignificant. As for not showing interest in doing things themselves, as the video says, the PL do already have their own TV channel and provide a ready to broadcast package for countries that don't want to produce their own shows. They also tried and failed on multiple occassions to replace Scudamore with somebody from the broadcasting world. It's really not that big a leap for them to go ahead with this. The only factors holding them back is having the trust in the technology to run it (which will get there in time) and whether broadcasters will pay them enough where by the extra revenue they could generate isn't worth the hassle.
The PL just announced that it's sold the Nordic rights for 2022-2028 so it's looking like 8 years at the very least before this could happen and I'm sure the PL are hoping that Amazon, Facebook, Google etc will step up in a big way and delay things further.