Beer glasses on Sky Sports

I think this may have been asked before, but not sure if it got a reply.

When you see clips from Sky Sports on some news reports, instead of the red dot, there is sometimes a beer glass in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it has something to do with Sky's service to pubs. But then why does it appear on news reports?

Because, in simple terms, broadcasters use the same sort of "commercial" licence rather than a domestic one intended for living rooms.

although, recently, i have seen red dots from news reports - probably to do with premiership football

Going back to what DAS said, it's the same for pubs, apparently it was started in order to crack down on those getting Sky illegally AFAIK.

Interesting that... I'm sure I've seen some reports where half of the report has the beer glass, then half doesn't... same with the red dot icon. Or even half a report with a beer glass, then half with a red dot.

The beer glass isn't there all the time. Sky investigators are often in pubs to crack down on landlords, and know when the beer glass will appear, so they can find out easily. When the glass isn't being broadcasted, there is a red dot instead.

With a business card you get Sky Sports pub version on channels 401-404 - this has the beer glass/red dot and is in 4:3. They also get 'normal' Sky Sports on 751-754 which has widecreen switching and no beer glass or red dots.

Broadcasters with business cards should use channels 751-754.

There are various features, including the ability to invoke a "watermark" where the viewing card number is displayed, albeit fairly anonymously.

The licencened trade pay for Sky TV on the basis of ratable value, and the subscriptions are considerable. BSkyB are at the moment attempting to rack-rent their liceced subscribers, and so need to be pro-active in eliminating public displays of domestic channels in pubs.

The other issue is that Sky sell the pub and domestic audience seperatly, quite clever really.