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asjohnstone:
The pricing on this is a nonsense, $56 a month for skysports online when it can be delivered via their satellite pack for $29.
I'd really like to make this work and pay for the content; a NRL digital pass in Australia is A$89, iirc Sky NZ were looking for NZ$300 last year.
I'd like to watch some cricket and league; there are no circumstances in which I'll ever want to watch rugby union or motorsports. Sky seem determined to rort me here. It's like a supermarket saying if I want to buy some sausages, i first need to also buy some fish and potatoes or pay triple the cost.
Virtually all the content i want to watch can be obtained from offshore either for free or at a much lower cost, geo-blocking simply doesn't work. If they are relying on that they are screwed.
Raise your game fellas
Its not $29/mth. Whether the basic package subsidises sport subscribers has been debated previously on these threads. You are already ignoring that the hardware for the satellite rental is $18/mth (as evidenced by those who can "rent" the box to receive just the FTA channels). So already, without cross-package-subsidisation, its $47/mth vs the online FanPass price of $56/mth.
Sky are not determined to "rort" you. Its the modus operandi of all pay operators around the world. Bundled is much more effective as a business model than a la carte. In the US if you want NFL you need to add it to your bundle, want NBA, add that too, want MLB or NHL? You guessed it. Its incremental sport on top of the "bundle". You think we got it bad, we arent too badly off. Some interesting US research showed that if ESPN was offered as a separate channel rather than bundled then subscription would be 25% vs 75% as part of a bundle. Suggests that ESPN is unlikely to want to offer itself as an OTT offering, but thats by-the-by.
When looking at the NRL digital pass and comparing it between countries - last year it was Telstra offering it in Australia. Late last year it lost the digital rights but after threatening to walk from naming sponsor of the competition were able to re-buy the digital rights from Nine. The price was a hefty one though so whether its offered at last years loss-leading price of $3/wk vs NZ's $10/wk remains to be seen. It's also going to be interesting to see whether season passes are offered for various sports this year via FanPass or whether Sky sticks with the day/week/month structure. Here is a table showing the various costs of different sports. The "going rate" is around $10/week. Its called premium content for a reason.
Yes, you can bypass geoblocks. My views on that are well vented around here. Overseas viewers used to get NFL Gamepass for free. The number of US viewers that wanted to watch it for free by circumventing geoblocks meant that the NFL introduced global pricing. Those looking to beat the system cost the rest of us. The content provider will make their crust somehow. Steal from one and you'll end up stealing from all.
Sixth Labour Government - "Vision without Execution is just Hallucination"
Geek girl. Freelance copywriter and editor at Unmistakable.co.nz.
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