Looking at Digigiuide, it appears SS2 is to become the dedicated Premier League channel, SS3 for football, SS4 cricket and SS5 for the golf. SS1 is simulcasting one of the other channels most of the time, including SSNHQ, the only excpetion being when Super League is on.
Might SS1 become a channel showing the best of the rest then available to all subscribers. I'd have thought some sports bodies who have controversially sold events to Sky (I'm thinking The Open especially) would want their event to be available to all Sky Sports subscribers, not just those who opt for, in this case, the Golf channel. I guess though Sky could make that channel available to all subscribers for the event itself though.
This is getting into a bit of educated guesswork, but going by the advanced schedules, it would appear 401 becomes a sort of premium counterpart to Sky Sports Mix, showing the best of what's on Sky Sports - the mooted Main Event channel then? Be interesting to see how this is priced (a bonus channel included with any package?)
Then there's the question of where Arena slots in - my guess is that it will replace Mix on 407, with that channel moving to replace Sky Sports 1 SD on 409, and the latter - or whatever it ends up being called - getting bumped to a lower slot down the EPG (and tbh as a swapped HD channel it doesn't particularly matter where it ends up)
The fact that the "unchosen" Sports will end up a bit down the EPG, whatever option is chosen, shows that from hereon in Sky's focus in acquiring rights will firmly be on football, cricket, golf, and F1. Other sports - you'll have to fight for space on an Arena channel that will be overcrowded on day one.
This is getting into a bit of educated guesswork, but going by the advanced schedules, it would appear 401 becomes a sort of premium counterpart to Sky Sports Mix.........
Sky Sports 1 and 2 (401 and 402) present an interesting challenge because they are the two Sky Sports channels carried gratis on BFBS. How would you map forces viewing onto two channels if the underlying output had been streamed into genre-based packages?
One solution would be to assume 401 (the "main" channel) is one of the two, and the other would itself be a compendium that mops up all the other football (sorry soccer) and rugby. This might not work well, whilst its an assumption that rugby and football is the lead audience, all sport generally is important to the forces.
There's a channel:
BFBS Sports Extra
, that takes coverage from the other Sky Sports channels as well as BBC, ITV4 etc. They also occasionally show forces sport.
Perhaps it might be possible for Sky and BT Sport to pick-up more forces sport, and not just to show the occasional Army -vs- Navy rugby?
Some more listings have been added to Digiguide today, the tennis from Hamburg will be on what is now Sky Sports 1 from Mon 24-Wed 26 July but then disappears, so I assume from the Thursday it's on a new channel.
Historically, and I'm not sure to what extent (apart from, I think, BT Vision) this remains the case, Sky Sports 1&2 had greater availability because of the Ofcom Wholesale Must Offer decision on those channels. That decision was revoked, but seemingly on the understanding that Sky wouldn't seek to move Premier League from Sky Sports 1&2 except in exceptional circumstances (e.g. last day of the season where there might be more than one match being shown). As I say I don't think there are any ROI providers now carrying only Sky Sports 1&2 and I think BT vision is the only UK one (but possibly major enough for Sky to have to ensure - if they weren't going to do it anyway - that Sky Sports Premier League is the linear successor to Sky Sports 2).
The fact that the "unchosen" Sports will end up a bit down the EPG, whatever option is chosen, shows that from hereon in Sky's focus in acquiring rights will firmly be on football, cricket, golf, and F1. Other sports - you'll have to fight for space on an Arena channel that will be overcrowded on day one.
You're right about educated guesswork, but I would fundamentally like to think that any sport that Sky has rights to, they will show somewhere. Or to put it a different way, if two sports are competing for the same dedicated channel at the same time, they will have a solution so as both get shown including full-recordable channels.