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.

kingdragonfly

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#222667 23-Aug-2017 07:16

Sky, it's no longer 1999. You have competition, and it's going to get worse for you (better for everyone else).

Do you hear Netflix complaining about Internet piracy? No, because they know anyone who still pirates TV shows will never be a customer.

So stop abusing the general public, in particular sports fans; you're no longer the only game in town.

Start worrying about how to survive with competition.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/96015124/sky-tv-loses-33880-satellite-subscribers

Its number of satellite TV subscribers dropped to 705,652 at the end of June, down 33,800 over the year.

Despite the growth in competition from Netflix, Spark's Lightbox service and Amazon Prime Video, Fellet said 'piracy' was Sky's biggest competitor.

'The big problem is the increasing ease by which pirated content is accessible,' he said.

He noted Sky was taking legal action against two distributors of Kodi media players which are believed to be used by tens of thousands of New Zealand households to access premium programming for free.

He also criticised the news media for 'taking clips of the best parts' of Sky Sports and publishing them online."

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#1850864 23-Aug-2017 07:35

Typical case of a company who's in denial and blames everybody else for their woes rather than looking at the bigger picture.

There are lots of cable and pay TV companies struggling at present, and interestingly most aren't blaming piracy. It's going to be very intersting to see what the global pay tv space is like 10 years from now - sport in particular is becoming a massive burden for many as costs increase astronomically. That's ultimately going to be unsustainable going forward in some markets.

While we'll clearly never know a true figure it's safe to say Sky are paying NZ Rugby tens of millions of dollar per year. What happens when they can't afford to pay that any longer?

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#1850920 23-Aug-2017 08:21

sbiddle:

There are lots of cable and pay TV companies struggling at present, and interestingly most aren't blaming piracy. It's going to be very intersting to see what the global pay tv space is like 10 years from now - sport in particular is becoming a massive burden for many as costs increase astronomically. That's ultimately going to be unsustainable going forward in some markets.

I'm also interested to see what this all means for the advertising industry, as people flock to ad-free services such as Netflix or Lightbox. Will we see more multi tier services, such as Hulu?

surfisup1000

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#1850929 23-Aug-2017 08:31

Piracy is partly responsible . However, no point blaming what cannot be changed as it comes across as being whiny and impotent. Who wants that in a CEO? You want answers and solutions.

Sky seems to be losing about 40,000 customers per year or so. I wonder when they will hit a floor?

trig42

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#1850932 23-Aug-2017 08:34

Do you think he (Fellet) considers RugbyPass and VPNs/DNS Redirectors 'Piracy'?

He is coming across as a desperate man trying to justify his salary to his shareholders.

Lias

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#1850971 23-Aug-2017 08:56

kingdragonfly:

No, because they know anyone who still pirates TV shows will never be a customer.

I disagree with that. I'm still a paying Sky subscriber, because SWMBO and to some degree the kids want it and I've been unsuccessful in converting them to use Kodi/Plex. I however "pirate" virtually everything I personally watch however, even if it airs on Sky. I object to paying a frankly obscene price to Sky, still getting ads, no proper HD/4K on demand, and then being expected to Add Soho for show A, or also subscribe to Netflix for show B, Lightbox for show C, etc. When a content provider gives me every single show and movie (or close to), on demand, ad free, in HD/4K, I will quite happily shower them in money. Spotify/Youtube/etc have mostly eliminated music piracy, Steam has done the same for PC gaming, because I can get everything (or almost everything) in once place. In the TV/Movie space we're seeing the opposite, increasing fragmentation, every content provider wanting you to sign up to their $15/month package for the one or two decent shows on it. I really think a "piracy killer" is possible, it just requires the death of some middlemen and content creators accepting that the days of multi bajillion dollar profits are gone.

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sbiddle

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#1850975 23-Aug-2017 08:59

trig42:

Do you think he (Fellet) considers RugbyPass and VPNs/DNS Redirectors 'Piracy'?

He is coming across as a desperate man trying to justify his salary to his shareholders.

He reminds me a lot of the CEO of the Taxi federation. An industry player in a traditional monopoly who spend each day trash talking Uber rather than actually trying to bring innovation to the market.

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surfisup1000

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#1850977 23-Aug-2017 09:02

trig42:

Do you think he (Fellet) considers RugbyPass and VPNs/DNS Redirectors 'Piracy'?

He is coming across as a desperate man trying to justify his salary to his shareholders.

There are varying degrees .

The lower level bypass would be what you refer to, DNS overrides. People are mostly paying for their content or viewing it from countries (using vpn/dns) where the content is legally free. I don't consider this piracy at all.

Piracy is using illegal streaming services (via kodi and the like), online websites such as putlocker, and plain old torrent downloads.

michaelmurfy

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#1850983 23-Aug-2017 09:06

To be honest, sounds like Sky have overdosed on Coffee and have now resorted to tinfoil hats.

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Pumpedd

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#1850985 23-Aug-2017 09:08

surfisup1000:

Piracy is partly responsible . However, no point blaming what cannot be changed as it comes across as being whiny and impotent. Who wants that in a CEO? You want answers and solutions.

Sky seems to be losing about 40,000 customers per year or so. I wonder when they will hit a floor?

Wrong

Piracy is a result of this elitist pricing model where only those that want to pay in excess of $100/month can watch our national games or high quality content like GoT.

trig42

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#1850986 23-Aug-2017 09:08

surfisup1000:

There are varying degrees .

The lower level bypass would be what you refer to, DNS overrides. People are mostly paying for their content or viewing it from countries (using vpn/dns) where the content is legally free. I don't consider this piracy at all.

Piracy is using illegal streaming services (via kodi and the like), online websites such as putlocker, and plain old torrent downloads.

Agreed, but I'm willing to bet that Fellet would publicly call these region unblocking services 'Piracy' (I put it in quotes because I believe it is just parallel importing).

Piracy = Torrenting GoT on a Monday night. Piracy is not Watching GoT on HBO Now (which you have a paid subscription for) by using a DNS Unblocker or VPN/ I suspect Mr Fellet would use the dramatic Piracy word to describe the latter of these two scenarios as well.

surfisup1000

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#1850987 23-Aug-2017 09:09

Lias:

kingdragonfly:

No, because they know anyone who still pirates TV shows will never be a customer.

I disagree with that. I'm still a paying Sky subscriber, because SWMBO and to some degree the kids want it and I've been unsuccessful in converting them to use Kodi/Plex. I however "pirate" virtually everything I personally watch however, even if it airs on Sky. I object to paying a frankly obscene price to Sky, still getting ads, no proper HD/4K on demand, and then being expected to Add Soho for show A, or also subscribe to Netflix for show B, Lightbox for show C, etc. When a content provider gives me every single show and movie (or close to), on demand, ad free, in HD/4K, I will quite happily shower them in money. Spotify/Youtube/etc have mostly eliminated music piracy, Steam has done the same for PC gaming, because I can get everything (or almost everything) in once place. In the TV/Movie space we're seeing the opposite, increasing fragmentation, every content provider wanting you to sign up to their $15/month package for the one or two decent shows on it. I really think a "piracy killer" is possible, it just requires the death of some middlemen and content creators accepting that the days of multi bajillion dollar profits are gone.

I tend to both agree and disagree with you.

Don't you think being the owner of something should give you some rights over how they sell to their customers? Do we have the right to pirate just because we don't like how it is being sold to us?

I prefer the idea of spotify for video type service. Where one monthly fee gets you access to pretty much anything. Having to join amazon/lightbox/netflix/getflix etc etc is just too cumbersome. It is easier to join one and pirate the rest.

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surfisup1000

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#1850990 23-Aug-2017 09:10

trig42:

surfisup1000:

There are varying degrees .

The lower level bypass would be what you refer to, DNS overrides. People are mostly paying for their content or viewing it from countries (using vpn/dns) where the content is legally free. I don't consider this piracy at all.

Piracy is using illegal streaming services (via kodi and the like), online websites such as putlocker, and plain old torrent downloads.

Agreed, but I'm willing to bet that Fellet would publicly call these region unblocking services 'Piracy' (I put it in quotes because I believe it is just parallel importing).

Piracy = Torrenting GoT on a Monday night. Piracy is not Watching GoT on HBO Now (which you have a paid subscription for) by using a DNS Unblocker or VPN/ I suspect Mr Fellet would use the dramatic Piracy word to describe the latter of these two scenarios as well.

Probably you're right. Thats where they need to get their heads out of their .....

rb99

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#1850992 23-Aug-2017 09:11

This may well be irrelevant (and wrong) but it baffles me how you can claim copyright (and the billions in fees) for soccer or rugby anyway - where's the creativity in that, the artful zoom in on a player just as he spits on the floor or sneezes into his shirt ?

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

rb99

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#1850996 23-Aug-2017 09:14

Suppose if there was one service providing everything there'd be lots of moaning about monopolies and cartels etc

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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#1851004 23-Aug-2017 09:20

Piracy eh. What stops that. Cheaper easy alternatives.

Oh wait.. http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/92271651/Sky-TV-slashes-Fan-Pass-sports-service

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