BT to show Premier League Football

[Samdy Gray]

I'm hoping (greedily, because I have BT Vision) that BT and Sky will cut some kind of deal whereby Sky run the BT Sport channel and reciprocate by making SS3, SS4, SSN & SkyF1 available on BT Vision.

[pauld]

That is a crazy amount of money being paid for the rights. Watching football live is going to get a lot more expensive.

Let's hope so. The whole £3bn package just seems to me to be yet a further widening of the gap between rich and poor in English football (irrespective of a few crumbs of "trickle-down" money thrown the FL's way), and most of the extra money in the PL will just be blown on even more obscene players' wages and agents' fees. Which will in turn serve only to cause even more clubs lower down to over-reach themselves in an attempt to reach the promised land.

The one ray of hope is if SKY and BT are forced to push up their prices so high to pay for all this that their subscribers won't pay it and the whole house of cards will collapse.

I may have a bit of a monk on this morning, but yet more money in the PL TV pot just sounds to me like extremely bad news. Unless I've missed something in the announcement? It all just seemed to be being trumpeted as a wholly uncritical "All hail the all-conquering Premier League and the Warrior Knight Richard Scudamore" or "Gosh, isn't football bonkers?" type story in all the coverage I've heard/seen, with absolutely zero sensible analysis

[stfcinbmth]

The one ray of hope is if SKY and BT are forced to push up their prices so high to pay for all this that their subscribers won't pay it and the whole house of cards will collapse.

Now wouldn't that be funny

[Wilf Shergold]

I'm finishing with Sky Sports in a few days and to be honest don't know if I can be bothered to renew any more in the Autumn. Mainly I couldn't give a toss about Norwich v West Brom, or whatever, at the best of times, let alone at the new inflated rate they'll both charge.

I've never understood why the lower leagues, maybe including the Championship, don't do their own multi-game deals rather than the fill-in games scattered over Sky / BBC we seem to get at the moment. (Yes I know there's already a deal, but it all seems haphazard as to when games are on.) Surely a local (A420?) derby or top of the table clash, for all 3 divisions, would be a commercial success for ITV or ESPN at lunchtime and 5pm on a Saturday, or Sunday avo? I'd pay a tenner a month for say 10+ non-Prem live games.

[Riddick]

Nobody watches them?

Most premier league games have less viewers than a standard midsomer murders repeat and they cost next to nothing to play out.

[walcot red]

I'm finishing with Sky Sports in a few days and to be honest don't know if I can be bothered to renew any more in the Autumn. Mainly I couldn't give a toss about Norwich v West Brom, or whatever, at the best of times, let alone at the new inflated rate they'll both charge.

I've never understood why the lower leagues, maybe including the Championship, don't do their own multi-game deals rather than the fill-in games scattered over Sky / BBC we seem to get at the moment. (Yes I know there's already a deal, but it all seems haphazard as to when games are on.) Surely a local (A420?) derby or top of the table clash, for all 3 divisions, would be a commercial success for ITV or ESPN at lunchtime and 5pm on a Saturday, or Sunday avo? I'd pay a tenner a month for say 10+ non-Prem live games.

ITV tried that years ago when they were starting to launch what is now called freeview and they made a massive clusterfuck of it