BT Sport makes its move

First topic message reminder :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22462525

BT Sport 1 and 2 will be free to BT Broadband customers. That is quite a lot of sport, including 38 live Premier Games. Quite incredible move, and might break the near-monopoly of Sky Sports. Hats off to BT for that.

Employing Joey Barton was poor. I put it on, called him a **** and then put it off.

Duty281 wrote:Comparing Andy Gray to a convicted sex offender? Bit over the top.

I'm not comparing him to anything Duty.

Oh sorry Freek, I was referring to Fourth Lion and how he compared it to the BBC showing repeats of Stuart Hall.

Oh right, apologies buddy   

my head's in a spin and I'm a fiver down.

But you feel a better person inside, right?

That's all that counts!

Apparently she's done it a few times! And under changed people too.

Bless her.

Duty281 wrote:Wonder if BT will try and get Clive Tyldesley onto their commentary team, seeing as pretty soon ITV will only have England games and the odd Champions League fixture?

As long as they don't take Andy Townsend with him....

ITV will only have highlights of the Champions League. They have England games until 2018.

Hope that the BBC get the England games back from ITV when the rights are up for sale again.

There are no words low enough to describe ITV's football coverage.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/33062532

"BT Sport will broadcast all 351 Champions League and Europa League matches next season.
It will make some matches available for everyone to watch, whether a subscriber or not, via a new free-to-air channel called BT Sport Showcase.
The digital TV channel will show a minimum of 12 Champions League matches and 14 Europa League games.
Gary Lineker and Jake Humphrey will present the programmes, with Rio Ferdinand also fronting live coverage."

BT have defeated Sky. Well done.

Considering Sky still have a big majority in the PL. It's hardly defeating them when CL football is a few nights a week every couple of months.

Sky show - Spanish football. ITV show German.
BT show - German/Italian/Brazilian

Not really missing out on much tbh

I just wish they would get ridof Owen Hargreaves

Considering the prices of Sky Sports and BT Sport you can say BT will defeat Sky eventually. Sky show Premier League, the overrated La Liga, Eredivisie, and golf, golf, golf, more golf, cricket, cricket and cricket. Oh, and apparently darts is a sport.

BT have Premier League, FA Cup, Champions League, Europa League, Bundesliga, Serie A, SPFL, MLB, NBA, NCAA basketball, NCAA football, Premiership rugby, European Cup rugby, French rugby, MotoGP, Indycar, and womens tennis. Plus the shows they have relating to those things and they have rights to show Baseball Tonight, NBA Tonight and College Football Live.

BT is easily the better package. It's what? £15 a month? I get it all for free on Virgin.

Sky has french rugby

arent BT going to charge extra to show champions league?

If you view BT through BT Vision or Virgin then they won't.

They'll charge an additional fiver now for BT Sport 2, ESPN and the new European Channel otherwise.

20 quid a month is steep, especially considering thats on top of most peoples sky package.

Azzy Mahmood wrote:BT is a massive company, has a rich history of doing things the right way, and has proven time and time again that they succeed when putting their efforts into something. I think this will be the downfall of Sky's monopoly.

I said this a year ago and it's already coming true. Given another year BT will be ahead of Sky on its coverage, having now signed Lineker to front the footy.

Did enjoy virgin.

Watched a fair bit of BT, well mainly the best thing on BT, which for me was UFC.

Now that I have sky(couldn't get virgin where i am now) i miss UFC.

A pi55 poor thing about Sky is you can record 2 programmes at once, but have to watch one.

BT Sports Pack in SD for Sky customers has risen from £12 to £19.99. If want HD it's £23.99

I expect the Sky package for BT customers will increase then...luckily I have a Sky Go login from someone so I can watch it all

If you've got BT landline and Internet it's free though right?

Yep. Free for BT broadband customers. Although I heard they might charge £5 when the new Europe channel launches.

And you get Gary Lineker now.

Has sky lost la liga rights to Bt for this season. Shocking stuff. Essentially sky is just PL, golf & F1 & leaves sky's dedicated European football channel with Scottish & Eredivisie action. Awful

It appears the LFP overplayed their hand. Sky made a bigger offer then BT (By some way apparently) and the LFP wanted a 2nd round, Sky refused to bid/pulled out meaning BT got it cheaply and for less then the LFP were getting from Sky.

Strange move by Sky tbh.

Again it's a bad thing for football fans. At some point BT are going to hike their prices to £25-35 like Sky just cos of what they own despite a severe lack of PL football.

It's been a good read on the virgin media forum with people (non-sports fans & non-football fans) kicking off about the xl package going up £3 a month to subsidise what they gave BT for the new Europe channel. I shouldn't imagine there'll be another price rise as they won't need to make another new channel anytime soon.

What's even funnier is the people who left Virgin for Sky and BT when ESPN disappeared and us on Virgin had to wait an extra week to get the BT Sport channels ended up worse off than those who stayed and even now if you add the price rises Virgin have done I'm paying roughly £9 a month for all four BT Sport channels.

im thinking of going to virgin, been looking at the big kahuna deal (gets both sky sports & bt) & it's not too much difference to what im paying for sky at the minute + internet off another provider. having no champions league or la liga is just not good enough, need to change.

LiamB wrote:Has sky lost la liga rights to Bt for this season. Shocking stuff. Essentially sky is just PL, golf & F1 & leaves sky's dedicated European football channel with Scottish & Eredivisie action. Awful

As long as it still has the majority of Premier League matches I couldn't care less about the rest.

Bundesliga on BT is far more exciting than PL. Adding La Liga does nothing for me, but I'm glad Sky are losing their monopoly.

It's bad for customers.

True competition is both having the same games and then choosing your preferred option- won't happen.

Instead we have split coverage requiring extra cash to get all games, with Sky and bt bidding more and more for coverage and passing the cost on to the consumer.

BT need to spend money on better football pundits, Owen Hargreaves and Michael Owen do my head in

To be fair, you don't buy he option with the better pundits, it's the games we're interested in. Sky have Henry who is shocking, Niall Quinn who is one of the worst, most biased commentators ever & you also have that awful David provin or whatever his name is. It's only Neville that saves the day for sky

Sky Sports has La Liga

Ah balls, were hoping BT would nab that as well.

Essentially BT had to give it up, as they couldn't envisage how taking on La Liga, would work with the other European football they already had & its timings.

It would have been a nice addition and a hammer blow to Sky. I'm not too bothered really.

If you look at what BT already show it's pretty packed out for the four channels. Having French, German, Italian football on the new channel will help with more air time for American sports, especially with NCAA football starting in a few weeks as well as more opportunities to spread more football too across the channels.

It appears all is not well with BT. UEFA unhappy at the low viewing figures and open to bring a few games back to ITV.

I have BT Vision, with BT Sport. And yet, I've watched one CL game live - I forget they're on, as BT does such a terrible job of advertising. This is no surprise. I'm lucky I have CL and PL games on series record so I can watch them while feeding the baby at 2am.

I've really enjoyed BTs coverage but I don't know of many other people that have access.

Why would UEFA care? Surely thats a BT problem as they wont get advertising revenue? UEFA already have their wad of cash.

I have BT Sport and anyone who doesn't know they have CL football clearly isn't paying attention. For a start off, anyone with an interest in the CL should have an inkling of when it's on and then, just use a bit of commonsense and look for it. What do you lot do when you want to watch something else, wait for BT to come up with a viewing box that can read your mind and do it for you?

Adam D wrote:Why would UEFA care? Surely thats a BT problem as they wont get advertising revenue? UEFA already have their wad of cash.

Because UEFA will be under pressure from advertisers as well to ensure there are enough eyes on the product, if viewing figures are down in England which I imagine is one of their biggest, if not the biggest market for Champions League, then all the sponsors and people who pay a lot of money to advertise aren't going to be happy.

Crimey wrote:

Adam D wrote:Why would UEFA care? Surely thats a BT problem as they wont get advertising revenue? UEFA already have their wad of cash.

Because UEFA will be under pressure from advertisers as well to ensure there are enough eyes on the product, if viewing figures are down in England which I imagine is one of their biggest, if not the biggest market for Champions League, then all the sponsors and people who pay a lot of money to advertise aren't going to be happy.

If you're like Azzy and have it recorded, you'll flick through the commercials anyway. Watch it live and you generally go for a pee and make a cuppa at half time anyway. I'm also of the belief that I've not been subliminally influenced by the advertising hoardings as I'm busy watching the actual football. Never thought, "Ooh, it's 2-0 but more importantly, I suddenly need to buy a new hatchback!"

Nobody ever thinks they're affected by advertising, that's what generally makes it good, because if you don't think you've been influenced by it, that in turn makes you more likely to actually buy/use the product advertised. Obviously it's not as simple as seeing a car advert and then going out and buying that car, it's about making that product be in your mind somewhere, so when you do then go looking for a car, you have that in mind, even if you can't remember why. 

Coca Cola spend more on advertising than anything else, despite the fact that every person in the world knows about Coca Cola.

Crimey wrote:Nobody ever thinks they're affected by advertising, that's what generally makes it good, because if you don't think you've been influenced by it, that in turn makes you more likely to actually buy/use the product advertised. Obviously it's not as simple as seeing a car advert and then going out and buying that car, it's about making that product be in your mind somewhere, so when you do then go looking for a car, you have that in mind, even if you can't remember why. 

Coca Cola spend more on advertising than anything else, despite the fact that every person in the world knows about Coca Cola.

I use Gillette Razors because I shave my head regularly and they're good, but I'll only buy them when there's an offer on. Have also found my upper limit whereby I don't see the need to buy a razor that vibrates or has a flexiball. My head doesn't have to be smooth enough to stand in for the cue ball at the snooker finals so you can bombard me with whatever ads you like, I shopped around, found my brand and stuck to it. Pointless another brand being in my mind if it's not going to translate into me actually swapping over. Advertising doesn't solidify my choice of razor either, I still use it cos it's good not because of the adverts...and I haven't upgraded to the next model like people do with their iPhones.

If you think you're not affected by advertising, you're very naive. Obviously it's not as simple as being mind-controlled and choosing a product because of the advert, it's about being aware of brands and this does influence your choices.

DAVE667 wrote:I have BT Sport and anyone who doesn't know they have CL football clearly isn't paying attention. For a start off, anyone with an interest in the CL should have an inkling of when it's on and then, just use a bit of commonsense and look for it. What do you lot do when you want to watch something else, wait for BT to come up with a viewing box that can read your mind and do it for you?

Netflix and Amazon Prime recommend programmes based on your viewing habits - why doesn't BT do the same to promote its expensive flagship programming?

Azzy wrote:

DAVE667 wrote:I have BT Sport and anyone who doesn't know they have CL football clearly isn't paying attention. For a start off, anyone with an interest in the CL should have an inkling of when it's on and then, just use a bit of commonsense and look for it. What do you lot do when you want to watch something else, wait for BT to come up with a viewing box that can read your mind and do it for you?

Netflix and Amazon Prime recommend programmes based on your viewing habits - why doesn't BT do the same to promote its expensive flagship programming?

Their recommendations bear little correlation to what I actually watch...so it's virtually worthless.

DAVE667 wrote:

Azzy wrote:

DAVE667 wrote:I have BT Sport and anyone who doesn't know they have CL football clearly isn't paying attention. For a start off, anyone with an interest in the CL should have an inkling of when it's on and then, just use a bit of commonsense and look for it. What do you lot do when you want to watch something else, wait for BT to come up with a viewing box that can read your mind and do it for you?

Netflix and Amazon Prime recommend programmes based on your viewing habits - why doesn't BT do the same to promote its expensive flagship programming?

Their recommendations bear little correlation to what I actually watch...so it's virtually worthless.

Works fine for me. The point remains, BT need to improve their marketing.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/02/12/uefa-concerned-by-bt-sports-dismal-champions-league-viewing-figu/

Their numbers are awful, seems like they don't advertise the free to air as they don't want people to watch it for free.