Sky Sports Wins 3 of 6 Premiership Packages

No more Monday evening games for Sky then. Do Sky get to show highlights / replays of the Setanta games ?

Due to the impact of the Champions League, Monday Night Football no longer has the same prestige that it used to, indeed the Saturday 12:45pm kickoff becomes more important as this is where you can get the teams involved in UCL football playing.

RE: Highlights - If Sky pick up, as I expect them to, the "Football First" package, they will get full access to all the games available. The games shown on Setanta will have restrictions over highlight length & gap between final whistle & showing. NB. Sky only paid £24million last time round for the Football First package, this price will go up this time.

Surprisingly the EU may actually have improved things for football fans.

Sky are showing all their games on Sky Sports (none are PPV) - and they are already saying they'll be showing more games than before (92 compared to 8.

Setana will effectively replace Premiership Plus as an extra subscription to watch more games.


Obvious question when anything happens - but what about Freeview?

ITV just about get away with closing CITV for a couple of hours - but Saturday night and Monday night games would clash with ITV4, and I don't think ITV will be as willing.

from a purely cosmetic perspective, I actually hope a bit of competition will buck Sky's ideas up. I think they've become a bit complacent and their coverage isn't as nearly as 'fantastic' as everybody says anymore, especially now we're stuck with Jamie Redknapp as a pundit.

I really really hoped that terrestrial broadcasters got 2 of the packages. Would have been fantastic for football.

And I wouldn't say the increased amount of games is good for football! More dodgy kick off times, more travelling, less attendance. AGGGH!

Sky are currently showing 138 games per season, 88 on Sky Sports and 50 on Prem Plus. They'll be showing 4 more games for free (non-PPV) under the new deal.. Big blow for Sky..

So we can expect PremPlus to be ditched then?

yep - no more Prem Plus. all games on normal Sky Sports

And they've paid about £300m more for those rights.

So Big Blow for the Sky Subscriber.

Essentially they have the money they previously received from Prem Plus payments AND the extra £300m to charge Sky Sports subscribers for.

I think this could result in a massive rise in subscriptions.

I've answered my own question here actually - on Sky Sports now, trailers are now running stating that Sky Sports will be running 88 live matches on their platform, yet PremPlus will be broadcasting an additional 50 matches . Therefore BSkyB Aactually have the right to 138 matches.

I'm afraid you haven't answered your own question.

Prem Plus WILL be ditched- the agreement just thrashed out comes into force from the 2007/8 season onwards.

The forthcoming season is still exclusively with Sky, including Prem Plus.

Good point. Completely forgot its the 2007/08 season that these new regulations come ito effect. Apologies.