NZ Rugby setting up their own platform.

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rugrat

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#305899 12-Jun-2023 12:37

https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/12-06-2023/revealed-nzr-a-new-digital-all-blacks-platform-that-could-spell-trouble-for-sky

Put in Sky thread as more about distribution then Sport itself. Still a chance Sky keeps NZ viewership after 2025. If not it’s more fragmentation for those interested in more than Rugby, but a possibility of a higher quality streaming product then what Sky currently provides. They seem to be low budget on streaming from my observations on their current offerings, no Dolby digital, currently no 4K etc.

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#3088980 12-Jun-2023 13:09

Good plan as a lot of people has sky just for the rugby...would be interested to see what pricing would look like for them not to renew the $500mil contract with Sky. That is a big income to pass on. 500mil over 6 years equates to 83mil a year or almost 7mil a month. so at $9.99 you need 700,000 kiwis to sign up or just over 10% of the population. Maybe not a bad idea afterall.

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networkn

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#3088981 12-Jun-2023 13:22

Silvrav:

Good plan as a lot of people has sky just for the rugby...would be interested to see what pricing would look like for them not to renew the $500mil contract with Sky. That is a big income to pass on. 500mil over 6 years equates to 83mil a year or almost 7mil a month. so at $9.99 you need 700,000 kiwis to sign up or just over 10% of the population. Maybe not a bad idea afterall.

Zero chance in any way whatsoever that it's going to be $9.99 a month.

NZR owns a chunk of Sky it's a strange move to cannibalize a portion of their investment. It would be far more sensible to offer Rugby only as a channel, with streaming options for a set price, offered through Sky.

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#3088983 12-Jun-2023 13:31

networkn:

Silvrav:

Good plan as a lot of people has sky just for the rugby...would be interested to see what pricing would look like for them not to renew the $500mil contract with Sky. That is a big income to pass on. 500mil over 6 years equates to 83mil a year or almost 7mil a month. so at $9.99 you need 700,000 kiwis to sign up or just over 10% of the population. Maybe not a bad idea afterall.

Zero chance in any way whatsoever that it's going to be $9.99 a month.

NZR owns a chunk of Sky it's a strange move to cannibalize a portion of their investment. It would be far more sensible to offer Rugby only as a channel, with streaming options for a set price, offered through Sky.

If you only have Sky Sport for the rugby, that's $38/mo. "25% off for the first four months", still a sticker price of $28.50.

Broadcast infrastructure used to be really expensive. Transmitting towers or satellite space. That's a massive fixed cost. You need the same amount of satellite space no matter how many viewers you have. In ye olde days it made sense to share that cost with others.

Now anyone can license a VOD platform, spin up some servers, and be a channel. The floor on fixed cost is much lower. The costs (bandwidth/CDN) per additional viewer are higher.

The issue will be people who have the capability to call up a salesperson and say "I want sky" but don't have the capability to install an app on their TV and go through a self-serve signup process.

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#3089067 12-Jun-2023 14:34

networkn:
Silvrav:

Good plan as a lot of people has sky just for the rugby...would be interested to see what pricing would look like for them not to renew the $500mil contract with Sky. That is a big income to pass on. 500mil over 6 years equates to 83mil a year or almost 7mil a month. so at $9.99 you need 700,000 kiwis to sign up or just over 10% of the population. Maybe not a bad idea afterall.

Zero chance in any way whatsoever that it's going to be $9.99 a month.

NZR owns a chunk of Sky it's a strange move to cannibalize a portion of their investment. It would be far more sensible to offer Rugby only as a channel, with streaming options for a set price, offered through Sky.

NZ Rugby owns 1.5% of Sky. It’s not going to have much of an impact on their decision making.

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#3089079 12-Jun-2023 14:53

Moved to correct sub-forum. Nothing related to Sky.

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#3089085 12-Jun-2023 15:34

Handle9:

NZ Rugby owns 1.5% of Sky. It’s not going to have much of an impact on their decision making.

I wasn't aware the number had dropped that low, but I see it was originally around 5% which I guess still isn't that huge.

Handle9

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#3089089 12-Jun-2023 15:43

networkn:
Handle9:

NZ Rugby owns 1.5% of Sky. It’s not going to have much of an impact on their decision making.

I wasn't aware the number had dropped that low, but I see it was originally around 5% which I guess still isn't that huge.

It got diluted when NZ rugby declined to participate in the capital raise in 2020.

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#3089101 12-Jun-2023 16:19

I'd subscribe, if it's at a reasonable price. I don't have sky, because outside of rugby I struggled to find things to watch.

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#3089120 12-Jun-2023 16:52

Silvrav: Good plan as a lot of people has sky just for the rugby...would be interested to see what pricing would look like for them not to renew the $500mil contract with Sky. That is a big income to pass on. 500mil over 6 years equates to 83mil a year or almost 7mil a month. so at $9.99 you need 700,000 kiwis to sign up or just over 10% of the population. Maybe not a bad idea afterall.

VOD gives them the opportunity to go direct to market worldwide. Might ruffle a few feathers though. Those who can't get an internet feed, or at least a decent/stable one (I'm mainly thinking rural here), won't be happy either - unless there's some sort of resell option somewhere in the mix.

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#3089122 12-Jun-2023 17:00

Dratsab:

Silvrav: Good plan as a lot of people has sky just for the rugby...would be interested to see what pricing would look like for them not to renew the $500mil contract with Sky. That is a big income to pass on. 500mil over 6 years equates to 83mil a year or almost 7mil a month. so at $9.99 you need 700,000 kiwis to sign up or just over 10% of the population. Maybe not a bad idea afterall.

VOD gives them the opportunity to go direct to market worldwide. Might ruffle a few feathers though. Those who can't get an internet feed, or at least a decent/stable one (I'm mainly thinking rural here), won't be happy either - unless there's some sort of resell option somewhere in the mix.

I am unaffected by this but I really feel it would be a tough thing to not have Rugby in NZ Via satellite, there are still Rural communities with pretty poor internet, but those communities live and breathe rugby. I imagine NZR is aware of this, so it's likely to continue providing Rugby to Sky for quite some time to go, though the cost of this per subscriber may be fairly horrific if overall subscriptions drop.

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#3089123 12-Jun-2023 17:03

Dratsab:

Might ruffle a few feathers though. Those who can't get an internet feed, or at least a decent/stable one (I'm mainly thinking rural here), won't be happy either - unless there's some sort of resell option somewhere in the mix.

Well those people have had it great in the past at the expense of those that have no interest in a dish or a term commitment to a legacy broadcaster who had no option.

They will always be competing with free pirate streams of the content, if there is no legit stream then 100% of people that want to watch online without dealing with a middleman will be pirates and they will see nothing from them. If they have an option to get it legit, they will convert some of those people and pick up others that would not pirate it.

Converting everything down to an obsolete codec and sending it out to space and back has had its day, low quality low framerate limited interactivity stuff vs online that adds so much to it.

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#3089124 12-Jun-2023 17:12

Why couldn't they do both? Allow direct subscription using SVOD at $x per month, and resell via sky at $y per subscriber per month.
I don't understand why video, uniquely, has to be locked in to exclusive single provider models
Depending on the retail, wholesale and markup rates applied by RNZ and Sky, this could please everyone

mentalinc

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#3089126 12-Jun-2023 17:16

Bundle Starlink and Rugby.

Advert is basically rugby balls beaming from the sports ground/stadium to the satellite and into your home TV via a starlink on the roof. PM me ad agency for the royalties payment bank account.

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cshwone

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#3089128 12-Jun-2023 17:22

Or possibly it's Sky for NZ and the new platform for the rest of the world where Sky don't or won't have rights.

networkn

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#3089129 12-Jun-2023 17:22

richms:

Well those people have had it great in the past at the expense of those that have no interest in a dish or a term commitment to a legacy broadcaster who had no option.

They will always be competing with free pirate streams of the content, if there is no legit stream then 100% of people that want to watch online without dealing with a middleman will be pirates and they will see nothing from them. If they have an option to get it legit, they will convert some of those people and pick up others that would not pirate it.

Converting everything down to an obsolete codec and sending it out to space and back has had its day, low quality low framerate limited interactivity stuff vs online that adds so much to it.

I 100% disagree with this. There are no other options for many Kiwi's who want to watch Rugby (or in fact any broadcast television). It's satellite or nothing (potentially starlink is an option for some of those, but comes with other complications such as the number of subscriptions those users might need to get the same content as Sky offers packaged in).

A very small number of users would have the technical nous to find a pirated stream of Rugby that would be worth the effort to get it. There are options to (legally) stream Rugby in NZ already.

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