No doubt they've been overvalued, but heck - they've always been over valued. And while it may be good news potentially for free to air viewers that Sky have to take a hit financially and be more cautious in bidding for other rights, ultimately it means that football is getting even more of the pot and there is less money broadcasting wise for other sports.
As for the BT Football Channel - it'll be interesting to see how it pays off. I think at face value ESPN without the Premier League is pretty much at deaths door, but to me and I'd think anyone who isn't so interested in football they don't already have Sky I'd have thought a multi-sport channel is more attractive than a football only channel. Perhaps if ESPN does survive on DTT then BT could actually keep it alive by offering it as a bundle with it's own football channel - BT for Premeir League, ESPN for a range of sports.
I reckon ESPN can survive, but it'll probably go into mid tier pay TV, and probably try and compete with Eurosport, although they put a lot of effort into the channel it's not worth the premium charge without any Premier League football.
I forgot about YouView, so that's a good incentive for them, I guess they'll really try and push Sky Sports 1 & 2 again, like they did in 2010, unless Sky p*ss on their bonfire.
I have this funny feeling that BT will create a Football Channel along the lines of the old The Prem Channel. PPV channel. Where you will be able to buy either a season ticket for the channel or pay for individual games.
To be fair logos change all the time, and a lot of those ones are minor. For example BBC One still uses the box design with only the font for 'One' changed, ITV1 and 2's have just changed colour and angle slightly, and More4 only recently changed. The only one that is really obvious is Five/Channel 5 which has had a different logo for over a year now.
It's not like they've gone and used something like this for example
Now the dust has settled, an interesting and revealing article from MG ....
No one was more surprised than BSkyB to discover that the mystery bidder who forced a 70% increase in the price of UK live Premier League soccer rights was none other than BT. In the end BT only got 38 games a season – albeit plenty of good ones, with 18 first-choice picks – and Sky preserved the twin pillars of their soccer offering, Super Sundays and Monday evenings.
But the fact that it now appears that BT originally bid for the whole lot – all seven packages – with board clearance, reportedly, to spend somewhere north of £2bn if necessary, represents a very clear statement of intent – one not lost on Sky.
Good on BT for trying to pull the rug under the skys feet, or maybe that was there plan all along to force up the price to make sky pay a lot more while grab some good games?
