This is because they decided to pay ridiculous amounts of money, fo have rights to televise the sports, so don't make out they are being generous to the general public.
Here’s some quick maths mate. Sky Sports has 10.4million customers paying an average of £21 month (£8 less than it was 10 years ago, contrary to what folk say…). Thats £218 million of revenue. The Premier League alone costs £3.6 Then there’s the Golf, F1, Boxing, Cricket and US sports. There’s a £3.4 billion shortfall on one sport alone.
They were in competition with others. Pay per view sport was happening either way. I’m not making out they are at all, it’s a commercial business. All businesses exist to make money. We go to work to make money. Businesses aren’t there to do us a favour. Sky subsidise their business from other businesses. That’s a fact. They didn’t ‘decide’ to pay the money. The paid the going rate. Someone else would have paid close to it anyway.
Those maths are far too simple though. You can't just isolate a single revenue stream and say it's "sold at a loss" when there are many other revenue streams that are attributed to BSkyB It's like say the club sell the Sausage Rolls at a massive loss, but the markup on the beers is massive so they make huge profits at Year End. It's myopic and propaganda-led to only focus on a single revenue stream Like I say, it's a standard sales pitch that has been used by almost every company with a Retentions Team in a Call Centre in the last 25 years
You reckon it’s easy to fill that £3.2 billion though? That’s just for football remember. All other sports. All the exclusive US shows. First access to all new movies. 328 channels. Paramount & Discovery plus all free. Subscriptions are a tiny part of the revenue, it’s all advertising. Not denying Sky make a lot of money mate, it’s a brilliant business model, it’s cast iron fact that what customers pay is subsidised through advertising revenue though.
Surely Sky get the advertising because they have the sports rights, which attracts viewers. If Sky are making lots of money and subscriptions are a tiny part of the revenue they could provide it free to customers.
They probably could if UK advertising rules were like the US were they have 15 mins plus ad breaks. I’m sure it’s Sky Max (formerly Atlantic) that brings in most money.
I'd switch to Sky but the broadband speed where I live with them is slow as ****. I get gigabit (1130mbps) broadband with Virgin, plus all channels (Sky Sports + BT Sports) included, for £56 a month. Fastest speed Sky will offer me is 36mbps. No thanks
It's unreal isn't it! I'm a video editor (amongst other things) and work from home so upload/download a lot of data. I only have a gigabit motherboard on my PC so I don't even get the full 1130mbps as it maxes out at like 940mbps. Not sure I could ever downgrade now.
Ah its unreal mate. Seen it run as high as 1300mbps. Be perfect for what you do, for me it’s buy an Xbox game and ready to play in 20 mins used to be hours even on 70mbps fibre. 150 devices with no loss of service. Mental
I just rang them today and asked if I could reduce my package and instead they’ve left it all the same and knocked £20 a month off. Can’t say fairer than that.
I guess it’s like any business where prices are always changing and different deals come up all the time. I understand what you’re saying though, why charge X amount when they can clearly do it cheaper, but they’re a business.
Sorry to rain on your parade, Scootsie, but I rang them today - I’m keeping same package with £30 off! But I suppose it boils down to what we are actually paying and for what.
We’ve got every channel bar BT Sport and the best broadband they offer and I was paying £129, which probably isn’t a bad price considering. They were good though. £20 knocked off and the £30 fee waived.
