Sky blames piracy for lost customers. Sky: it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Forums › Sky, Neon, Lightbox › Sky blames piracy for lost customers. Sky: it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

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#1851508 23-Aug-2017 20:48

mattwnz:
Jase2985:

Bung: The reason Sky lost me as a customer is the ad telling me that Sky values its customers so has arranged "deals" with a range of partners. I'm not interested in a price cut by one of Sky's advertisers.

the reason they lost me is they can continually offer deals to new customers but would only hike the price on those that had been with them for years. its gets to the point where you can just find the content elsewhere

I read that they are going to stop doing these deals for new customers, possibility for that reason. Most ISPs do it too, but at least we can move between ISPs

What nzers really need is a big company like Amazon or Netflix to come along and buy the rights to nz sports events. Although I am a firm believer in sports of national significance being FTA, due to them being cultural events,and sport is such a big part of Nzr's culture.

Yes.

BUT

While we all like to hate Sky, sports rights costs are not Skys doing. If rugger, to take one key example goes to Amazon, Netflix, or Countdown, they will STILL WANT THE BIG MONEY. Doesnt matter who transmits it, the cost remains the same. I have no idea why pricing is 100% Sky rooting. They pass on the costs they have to pay.

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#1851512 23-Aug-2017 20:54

SheriffNZ:

So you want a big American company running our national sport, because that is what would happen if they do get the rights. The rugby board would get told who they could play and where and at what time. You wouldnt see any All blacks doing promotion in NZ, they would go where the money and audience is.

To be fair, what's stopping Sky doing something like this at the moment? I would suggest at the moment its their agreement with the NZRU which has an obligation to ensure NZ Rugby as a whole is developed. This wouldn't (or shouldn't) change.

No. NZRugby, SANZAR want these big dollars. If you want it, pay it. Sky could say bugger off, but sport is their big draw, so they pay. Works for both. It would be fin though if Sky said bugger off, as too what would happen then, cant see it though

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#1851515 23-Aug-2017 20:59

MikeB4:

The industry in general faces a huge problem. that is , fragmentation and profit dilution. In the US Studios are looking to copy the success that Netflix has achieved by going it alone eg Disney. The result is profits will become so diluted that innovation and customer service will eventually be degraded. Just because one or two

companies like Netflix can succeed does not mean 10, 20, 30 can succeed. In the end the consumer is the one that will either need to stump up with multiple subscriptions and wade through a load of rubbish to get a small content worth watching or be limited in their viewing choice.

I agree. Netflix isn't actually successful. Its taken losses forever, now returns a small profit. Hugh churn. I have NF, and I haver said for all the rubbish 4000 movies I wont want to watch. heard that before :-)

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#1851516 23-Aug-2017 20:59

tdgeek:

I generally agree.

Optus ends 2018 or 2019. They are locked into that. They dropped 40,000. But in recent "Netflix is cool" years its held well.

Optus contract actually expires in 2021.

Fellet will also make sure that any 4K content is sat only and not over Internet - this could be via an SD only app for the first 5 years.

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#1851518 23-Aug-2017 21:03

Pumpedd:

MikeB4:

The industry in general faces a huge problem. that is , fragmentation and profit dilution. In the US Studios are looking to copy the success that Netflix has achieved by going it alone eg Disney. The result is profits will become so diluted that innovation and customer service will eventually be degraded. Just because one or two

companies like Netflix can succeed does not mean 10, 20, 30 can succeed. In the end the consumer is the one that will either need to stump up with multiple subscriptions and wade through a load of rubbish to get a small content worth watching or be limited in their viewing choice.

It does mean that technology should be used to change business models..not bury heads in the sand like Fellet. Its a bit like Trump trying to reinvigorate the US coal industry when clearly its time is done.

Can you clarify?

I dont care about technology, I just want my shows. Problem is, no matter what tech is used, some rights holders want their money. Tech can certainly help reduce costs, though. But not to allow everything to be cheap as chips. $13 per month is todays standard. Thats not do-able, IMHO

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#1851522 23-Aug-2017 21:09

JimmyH:

I'm not sure I am buying the piracy angle. Sure, it is a problem for Sky and other providers, but my understanding was that with the rise of easy to use and competitively priced streaming services piracy had plateaued and was actually declining a bit - with Netflix now accounting for much more US internet traffic than bit torrent. Piracy would have to be increasing significantly over the last two years for it to be a good explanation of Sky's profit drop over that period, and I doubt it has.

I'm also bemused that Sky seems to equate a 60-second news clip on Stuff or TVNZ after the fact with Piracy. Firstly, I don't know any sports fan would would see that as a viable alternative to actually watching the game properly. Secondly, along with most other people I know, I block Stuff et al from even playing video clips, as a consequence of their insufferable auto playing of them.

We had a bit of a conversation around lunchtime where I am working at the moment. A few people were like me, and had had their Sky subscriptions for decades. It used to be that when Sky cam up there were those who didn't like them, and those who subscribed because they thought it was good value. What I found interesting was that no one, even the long term subscribers, had a good word to say about them. And pretty much everyone was looking at alternatives and said they had been actively considering dropping Sky in recent months.

I think the only thing stopping the exodus becoming a flood is the hammer lock Sky still has on most sport. If, for example, the rugby got acquired by another provider then I think they would be in deep trouble.

I also can't understand why the Board and shareholders are retaining Fellet as the CEO. He seems to be well past his sell-by date and not really leading the company. Their recent efforts to move with the times (Fanpass, Igloo, Neon) all seem to be either poorly thought out and/or poorly executed. Apart from reaching for the lawyers to try and sue perceived threats, he doesn't seem to have the faintest glimmer of a clue how to respond to the rapidly changing environment Sky is in.

Piracy isn't right, your correct.

Tell me what Sky should have done, say 2 years ago.

I cant understand why people ditch Sky for Netflix and Lightbox. It cant be content, as Sky doesnt show much if anything that NF and LB have. NF and LB dony=t have anything that Sky has. Weird. That rarely overlap, so dropping one to get the other doesnt make cents....

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#1851525 23-Aug-2017 21:10

Spyware:

tdgeek:

I generally agree.

Optus ends 2018 or 2019. They are locked into that. They dropped 40,000. But in recent "Netflix is cool" years its held well.

Optus contract actually expires in 2021.

Fellet will also make sure that any 4K content is sat only and not over Internet - this could be via an SD only app for the first 5 years.

Really?? There has been a few Sky threads here, and 2018 or 2019 is all I can recall.

@ockel

SheriffNZ

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#1851532 23-Aug-2017 21:20

tdgeek:
SheriffNZ:

So you want a big American company running our national sport, because that is what would happen if they do get the rights. The rugby board would get told who they could play and where and at what time. You wouldnt see any All blacks doing promotion in NZ, they would go where the money and audience is.

To be fair, what's stopping Sky doing something like this at the moment? I would suggest at the moment its their agreement with the NZRU which has an obligation to ensure NZ Rugby as a whole is developed. This wouldn't (or shouldn't) change.

No. NZRugby, SANZAR want these big dollars. If you want it, pay it. Sky could say bugger off, but sport is their big draw, so they pay. Works for both. It would be fin though if Sky said bugger off, as too what would happen then, cant see it though

I think you missed my point. I was effectively saying that the NZRU could get bigger money if they wanted to take the game solely to where it made the most money and forget about their NZ market. Sky don't care about NZ rugby, other than as a mechanism to generate money. The only reason NZRU does do stuff here in NZ is because it has an obligation to, probably written in its constitution or some other similar document.

JimmyH

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#1851535 23-Aug-2017 21:29

There is a bunch of stuff they might have done, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

The real question is what should they do now.

For starters, they need to improve the viewer experience. That means getting rid of the interminable ads and promos that render shows on a fair number of their channels unwatchable. It also means ditching the HD ticket nonsense and incorporating HD into the base package. It probably means some price rebalancing to eliminate cross-subsidies and better align some pricing with competitors offerings - which should include bring down the cost of the base package as well as the SoHo and Movies options, and recouping this by raising the price of the sports package, to better reflect underlying costs.

From my perspective they need to improve picture quality. That means not bit-starving many channels so that they look terrible. If that means dropping one or two lesser watched channels to free up bandwidth in order to do so. However, they could probbaly do this without removing content by removing the ads they are padding many shows with.

They need to to take a look at their channel packages as well. Take TCM. In North America TCM is a channel worth having. Here, we sem to get TCM Asia instead which has a much smaller catalogue, endless repeats, terrible picture quality (see bitstarving and HD points above), as well as the obnoxious practice of having the movie name plastered across the top of the screen for the entire movie. That's one reason I dropped the movies package. They need to fix this - proper TCM, with decent picture quality, and with the obnoxious branding dialled back. There are other channels that they need to attend to quality on as well.

Once they have fixed the viewer experience and re-balanced pricing they need to attend to other parts of their offering. Neon and Fanpass are flakey, and fanpass is overpriced. They need a reasonably priced streaming app for non satellite subscribers that works on most main platforms, and is far more reliable than what they have now.

Dropping the price promos for new customers, which irritates a lot of long-term subscribers who are more valuable to them but get nothing in the way of deals, and doing something to reward loyalty, probably wouldn't be a bad idea either.

From a GZ perspective, supplying and properly supporting a card-reader setup that lets subscribers integrate Sky with their HTPC and network based entertainment setups wouldn't be a bad move either.

And they need to improve their call center. The waiting queues can be atrocious, and they seem to have a fair number of imbeciles they don't know what they are talking about and give outright wrong information, and do other dumb stuff like scheduling techs for 6 8am visits at the same time, so that people who have delayed going to work because they are "first call" aren't kept at home waiting for something that won't happen.

I could go on, but that's enough to get the ball rolling.

rugrat

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#1851538 23-Aug-2017 21:34

tdgeek:

JimmyH:

I'm not sure I am buying the piracy angle. Sure, it is a problem for Sky and other providers, but my understanding was that with the rise of easy to use and competitively priced streaming services piracy had plateaued and was actually declining a bit - with Netflix now accounting for much more US internet traffic than bit torrent. Piracy would have to be increasing significantly over the last two years for it to be a good explanation of Sky's profit drop over that period, and I doubt it has.

I'm also bemused that Sky seems to equate a 60-second news clip on Stuff or TVNZ after the fact with Piracy. Firstly, I don't know any sports fan would would see that as a viable alternative to actually watching the game properly. Secondly, along with most other people I know, I block Stuff et al from even playing video clips, as a consequence of their insufferable auto playing of them.

We had a bit of a conversation around lunchtime where I am working at the moment. A few people were like me, and had had their Sky subscriptions for decades. It used to be that when Sky cam up there were those who didn't like them, and those who subscribed because they thought it was good value. What I found interesting was that no one, even the long term subscribers, had a good word to say about them. And pretty much everyone was looking at alternatives and said they had been actively considering dropping Sky in recent months.

I think the only thing stopping the exodus becoming a flood is the hammer lock Sky still has on most sport. If, for example, the rugby got acquired by another provider then I think they would be in deep trouble.

I also can't understand why the Board and shareholders are retaining Fellet as the CEO. He seems to be well past his sell-by date and not really leading the company. Their recent efforts to move with the times (Fanpass, Igloo, Neon) all seem to be either poorly thought out and/or poorly executed. Apart from reaching for the lawyers to try and sue perceived threats, he doesn't seem to have the faintest glimmer of a clue how to respond to the rapidly changing environment Sky is in.

Piracy isn't right, your correct.

Tell me what Sky should have done, say 2 years ago.

I cant understand why people ditch Sky for Netflix and Lightbox. It cant be content, as Sky doesnt show much if anything that NF and LB have. NF and LB dony=t have anything that Sky has. Weird. That rarely overlap, so dropping one to get the other doesnt make cents....

Sky, Basic $50, HD ticket $10, so $60 and content add infested, and then there's $15 to enable record, for on demand effect. There's over $50 of reason to ditch sky in favour of other two a month

Doesn't matter if all content doesn't overlap, just as long as there's something interested in to watch when want to watch TV, most people don't spend their whole lives watching tv. Plus if prepared to wait off top of my head, and some of these are SoHo programs which again is extra cost on Sky

lightbox Netflix have: The Americans, The Expanse, Homeland, 12 Monkeys, Defiance, American Horror Story, The Strain, and there's more soquite a bit of overlap.

Plus as I have no interest in Sports with NF and LB not subsidising what someone else likes.

networkn

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#1851559 24-Aug-2017 00:44

OK let's break down some numbers for those of you who would like Sky to be cheaper.

705,000 people have Sky. Last year they made 115 Million dollars, which works out at $148 per subscriber, of profit per YEAR, or $12.33 per month.

Let's just assume for a moment, that the shareholders don't want any return on their investment. If Sky decides to go insane and make no profit and then drops subscriptions by $12.33 a month, how many of you are going to be happy with that much less? Not many I'd wager, because let's say the average punter pays $100, that's only a relatively small discount.

The reality is that Sky isn't making massive profits, so if they substantially drop their revenues by offering a discount of 50% which is what I see most people are saying they think Sky is worth when they complain, then they would be out of business in a matter of 2-3 years I'd imagine.

It's time for a reality check. There isn't a way for you to have what you want, on an ongoing basis for 50% of what you pay now, with Sky's current expenses the way they are, and I am not certain what percentage content is, but I'd wagers it's easily their biggest expense, so even if they found a cheaper distribution method, even if they trimmed wages or sacked people etc) then they would still have to pay for content.

I think to some degree, if you want to complain, you need to talk to content providers.

Bottom line is, I'd love Sky to be cheaper, but in reality, I can't see it happening anytime soon. Having access to 50 Channels, 24 hours a day, ability to record in HD, 4 Channels at the same time, plus on demand content they are adding etc, works out at $3 a day.

If you don't see the value in that, unsubscribe, but I don't think Sky are ripping consumers off in NZ.

Is John Fellet a fool for his comments, does he have his head in the sand? Yes, I believe so on both counts. He is not the leader Sky needs, but I don't think any leadership is magically going to be able to offer the content available via Sky substantially cheaper until they can rid themselves of high content fees or satellite coverage fee's.

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rugrat

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#1851577 24-Aug-2017 01:29

networkn:

If you don't see the value in that, unsubscribe, but I don't think Sky are ripping consumers off in NZ.

Thousands don't see value and are cancelling their subscriptions and sky are blaming pirating for losing subscribers.

Other companies are charging less, and yes they have lower cost structures, so Sky is going to have to find a way to deal with it.

There are non money things Sky could do to improve user experience to but they seem to move very slowly. (Like making HD on demand content available)

Apsattv

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#1851582 24-Aug-2017 03:49

rugrat:

Sky, Basic $50, HD ticket $10, so $60 and content add infested, and then there's $15 to enable record, for on demand effect. There's over $50 of reason to ditch sky in favour of other two a month

The above is where Sky make a lot of profit, charging for basic functionalety of the decoder ! $10+$25 x 700000 subscribers.

Sure not all pay these fees personally I only use Sky for live sports so don't bother with paying for the record function.

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#1851584 24-Aug-2017 04:23

I would like to know what has happened to the planned decoder swapout? so that everyone has DVB-S2 compatible receivers and they can then proceed to swapover to DVB-S2 along with the removal of SD feeds of duplicated channels this should result in freeing up over %50 of their satellite capacity.

all these SD version could get the chop!

trackside 1
trackside 2
espn
espn 2
soho
sky arena
sky box sets
sky sport 1
sky sport 2
Sky Sport 3
Sky SPort 4
Sky Movies Action
Sky Movies classic
Sky Movies Disney
Sky Movies Extra
Sky Movies Greats

All of the BOX Office 6? on demand video channels could also be shifted to a proper Online delivery freeing up even more satellite space.

They have 7 transponders and they could quite easily cut down to 5 and still have room for SD channels like Discovery to switch over to the HD feed.

The next step after this would be , a move to shift all the niche ethnic channels to stream to the Sky decoder over the internet.

Going even furthur ahead, would be the introduction of any new linear content only being delivered over the internet with a phasing out of NEW channels on the satellite service.

sonyxperiageek

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#1851585 24-Aug-2017 04:45

rugrat:

networkn:

If you don't see the value in that, unsubscribe, but I don't think Sky are ripping consumers off in NZ.

Thousands don't see value and are cancelling their subscriptions and sky are blaming pirating for losing subscribers.

Other companies are charging less, and yes they have lower cost structures, so Sky is going to have to find a way to deal with it.

There are non money things Sky could do to improve user experience to but they seem to move very slowly. (Like making HD on demand content available)

Thousands don't see value because of what Netflix etc. have set up as a pricing standard of around $15 per month. That is not feasible for sports. Plus, Netflix has been in debt for a while now...

Sony

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