The Sport Thread

That sums up Sky Sports and BT Sport as a whole - the ratings just don't add up to the fees paid in most cases, and subscriptions appear to be subsidised by other areas of the business.

Back to the cricket and if Sky really are willing to pay £40m a year for a fledgling league in a sport dwindling in popularity it shows how much of a premium they're willing to pay to keep cricket to themselves - indeed I'd go as far as saying it's anti-competitive. It doesn't help too that unlike most other sports the ECB has a monopoly on cricket played in this country - football and rugby plus I think golf and tennis all have different organisations selling UK events to broadcasters - or at the very least the rights split in such a way they can be sold separately.

In the case of BT Sport, surely every BT customer (except those on the BT Basic plan) are paying for the sports rights with the increase to line rental and other packages?

Portsmouth's not looking quite as nice as yesterday. The America's Cup racing has been brought forward a bit, as has BT Sport's coverage today - they're going on air at 1130.

...and the racing's been abandoned, just as they've gone on air. Oh well!

Nice new titles from Sky Sports for the Rugby Championship. Oddly while they are evidently designed for the Rugby Championship (featuring the four participating unions) they read "International Rugby" at the end.

Meanwhile ESPN US' (or is it in this case ESPN Latin America? Graphics were in English) new graphics look very nice being used for rugby.

Indeed, the vast majority of games don't top 100,000 viewers. Virtually every game without Barcelona and Real has fewer than 50,000 viewers. To call these rights 'pivotal' is a nonsense.

If BT win the rights the level of churn from Sky will be nominal and Sky is already moving to fill up Sunday evenings with MLS games anyway. Beyond a few top games La Liga is content that most people watch because there's nothing else on.

A lot of the value in these rights are simply because BT wants to be seen taking more content from Sky.

The idea that these La Liga rights are any way pivotal is laughable. Yes they're good filler material and add to credibility of the brand they serve but no one is going to live or die based on rights to foreign domestic football.

Nobody watches them but they are a good selling point. Losing La Liga on it's own might not mean much but as they've already lost the Champions League while BT have the other main leagues in Europe it all begins to add up.

It's also about how their schedules look too - arguably the listings pages are the biggest advert for the product and when there is a lack of live content between the flagship live content it doesn't look that appealing.

Yep. Line rental and call charges are going up for everyone on September 22nd. So everyone will be paying for BT Sport rights, even if you don't have BT Sport (like I do at the moment. I renewed my subscription to the channel from 1st Aug, and they blocked the channels almost as soon as I put the phone down to them! There's nothing worth watching on BTS until Saturday, and was on the phone to them for so long, I can't be bothered to go into 'hold music hell' for another 15 mins - so I'll make do with the 7 Sky Sports channels, 2 Eurosport channels and At The Races) you'll end up paying for it.

Although, Sky put up the charges on every channel pack when they knew they would be paying £11 mill per game of Prem football from next season - so let's not let them get away without noting they are charging non sports customers for sports rights, as well..

A little thought about the Football League highlights that will air on Channel 5 this coming season. As both MTV and Channel 5 are owned by Viacom, what chance that Football League Tonight gets a repeat showing the next day on MTV, and the chances of MTV promoting in trailers the next edition on channel 5?

The former. None.

Why? How does Football League fit into the MTV brand or demographic? Why would it be repeated on an MTV-branded channel rather than on a Channel 5-branded channel (assuming there is a repeat)