I was just thinking the Sports Bulletins on One News and Newshub are going to be awfully short for a while

I already cancelled Spark Sport and will most likely end up cancelling Sky Sports too.  This will likely hit Spark harder as they only have the sports offering now where as Sky has many other content and therefore subscribers to try and mitigate the financial hit as best they can.

Benoire:

 

I already cancelled Spark Sport

 

I suspended rather than cancelled, but I won't resume until F1 is back

I must get a UHF antenna up so I can get Freeview in HD, maybe this will be the end of my twenty-year relationship with Sky

Seems pointless paying the subs with nothing to watch.

PolicyGuy:

 

Benoire:

 

I already cancelled Spark Sport

 

 

I suspended rather than cancelled, but I won't resume until F1 is back

 

I must get a UHF antenna up so I can get Freeview in HD, maybe this will be the end of my twenty-year relationship with Sky

 

Yeah I suspended to be accurate, ultimately I'm not paying for a service I'm getting no benefit from... With Sky my partner loves some of the crappy programmes on the entertainment package so we might end up looking at keeping that level of sub and save even more.

I wonder how long the streaming based companies can continue to fund the opex costs without users and whether the larger SVOD firms are going to be looking at bargains at the end of all this?

PolicyGuy:

 

Benoire:

 

I already cancelled Spark Sport

 

 

I suspended rather than cancelled, but I won't resume until F1 is back

 

I must get a UHF antenna up so I can get Freeview in HD, maybe this will be the end of my twenty-year relationship with Sky

 

Could always get a Vodafone TV unit so you won't need the UHF Antenna, and once all the Sport returns you can easily get Sky back through this as well.

Benoire:

 

I already cancelled Spark Sport and will most likely end up cancelling Sky Sports too.  This will likely hit Spark harder as they only have the sports offering now where as Sky has many other content and therefore subscribers to try and mitigate the financial hit as best they can.

 

What will happen to rights costs? If no events they would get pro rata refunds? 

Benoire:

 

I already cancelled Spark Sport and will most likely end up cancelling Sky Sports too.  This will likely hit Spark harder as they only have the sports offering now where as Sky has many other content and therefore subscribers to try and mitigate the financial hit as best they can.

 

I don’t see how it will hit Spark harder. Sport is Sky’s major draw card and probably the reason most subscribe. If someone wasn’t already interested in Sky’s other Entertainment options they’re not going to be suddenly interested now. (Unless they don’t understand streaming or internet not very good and nothing else to watch)

Spark’s major income will be from broadband customers, not Sport, so doubt it’ll effect their overall income that great.

Sky’s fixed costs will be higher as well. Spark can share it’s fixed costs with other parts of their business, I.e all the people in the building don’t have to be working on Spark Sports only.

There’s no OPTUS to pay which would be a fixed cost for Sky. I’m guessing streaming fixed costs, servers and anything else needed would be lower then this cost.

Maybe they'll (temporarily) switch off some of the sports channels until things return to normal?

@rugrat, I forget sometimes that Spark Sport is still part of Spark overall but will be interesting to see how much the rights costs and subscriber reduction affects their bottom line.. For Sky do they report on total sport subs or just overall?  Either way it will be hard for the sport distributors world wide!

@quickymart turning off channels won't change much I don't think as the satellite is a fixed cost and the majority of costs are in the content.

At this stage it looks like the ANZ Netball is still going ahead today, and for the foreseeable future

Clint 

I wonder if Sky will announce anything on this? Otherwise everyone cancels Sky Sport sub and often Sky itself. Maybe make sport free for the duration? 

tdgeek:

 

I wonder if Sky will announce anything on this? Otherwise everyone cancels Sky Sport sub and often Sky itself. Maybe make sport free for the duration? 

 

Potentially good call, they've already paid for rights and optus distribution so sunk costs but loss of subscribers due to this could hurt them overall, so providing a sweetener may help.