Cheapest Way to get All Sport

Mark Newham

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Oct 9, 2001, 7:13:20 AM10/9/01

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Someone must have been through the permutations!! I currently have Sky
Digital and the full package, but get pissed off that ITV Digital has some
football on live that I miss. I called ITV Digital to enquire about
subscribing to them, they said the cheapest way to get the Sports package
with ITV was for £16.98 per month whereby I could choose 6 premium channels.
I would want to keep Sky as I need access to Skysports News, so maybe I
could reduce my sports sub on Sky and take them as premium channels on ITV
Digital, is this the best way to cover all my bases?
(It would appear SkySports News is included in the minimum sub package or is
free to air!)

Mark

Jeremy Rogers

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Oct 9, 2001, 3:25:20 PM10/9/01

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"Mark Newham" <markn...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I would want to keep Sky as I need access to Skysports News, so maybe I
> could reduce my sports sub on Sky and take them as premium channels on ITV
> Digital, is this the best way to cover all my bases?

If you drop either Sky Sports 1 or 2 for a Sky Digital subscription
you also lose Sky Sports Extra which is not available via ITV digital.

Jez
--

Jeremy Rogers

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Oct 9, 2001, 3:31:44 PM10/9/01

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proteus <prot...@gmx.net> wrote:

> I don't think it's going to be a problem for that much longer. I am
> not at all sure ITV Digital will be around in a year's time. From
> today's Guardian:

> "Last month's First Division game between Nottingham Forest and
> Bradford City, the rights for which cost £1.2m, attracted only 1,000
> viewers to ITV Sport. It would have been cheaper for the channel to
> drive each of its viewers to the ground, put them up in a five-star
> hotel and give them all £500 spending money."

Viewers per individual game isn't what counts - it is subscriptions
that do. Advertising revenue is the icing.

However, the calculations here don't look that good either. On Digital as was
paid GBP 265M over 3 years for a minimum of 88 Nationwide games. This averages
out to about GBP 1M per game on rights costs alone, so the GBP 1.2M
quoted here seems a little high. (I think The Guardian have included
the separate GBP 50M put in originally to the deal by ITV as well -
but this pays for games to be shown on ITV1 not ITV Sport.)

Now if you do the sums on subscriptions, to cover this at the present
charge ITV Digital would need to sell over a million subscriptions to
ITV Sport to cover these costs alone, not accounting for anything else.

The Guardian states they have 200,000. Carlton is promoting
advertising on the basis that 45% of ITV Digital customers and 15% of
cable ones subscribe to ITV Sport (look at the media sales part of
the Carlton website). Bit of a difference here - not sure what/who is
wrong, but the Carlton figure is an 'estimate'.

Jez
--

Tim

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Oct 9, 2001, 5:39:17 PM10/9/01

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Mark Newham wrote in message
<1002626142.4825.0...@news.demon.co.uk>...

OK, some permutations:

The minimum to get ITV Sport Channel and ITV Sport Plus is £13.98 per
month - that's £6.99 for the minimum subscription, plus £6.99 for ITV Sport.
For an extra £3 per month you can also get ITV Sport Select, which has
another 60 live Premiership and Nationwide League games (40:20)

Sky Sports 1, 2 and 3 can be added for £16.

So the total costs are:

Skydigital minimum package with SSNews: £16
ITVdigital with all ITV Sport and SS1,2+3: £32.98
Total: £48.98

OR

Skydigital with all SS channels + Premiership Plus: £34
ITVdigital with ITV Sport: £13.98
Total: £50.98

So by taking SS1,2+3 from ITVdigital as well you save £2 per month, and get
to see 20 more Nationwide league matches, BUT you lose Sky Sports Extra.

The saving may be greater, because I'm assuming that you need the Sky Family
Pack to get SSN. This was the case when Sky last updated their website, but
their channel list is rather out of date.

Richardr

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Oct 9, 2001, 7:07:45 PM10/9/01

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In article <9pvrg9$h3h$2...@neptunium.btinternet.com>, usenet@tim-
gray.org.uk says...

> The minimum to get ITV Sport Channel and ITV Sport Plus is £13.98 per
> month - that's £6.99 for the minimum subscription, plus £6.99 for ITV Sport.
>

What minimum subscription is that?

Isn't the cheapest ITV package now £9.99, which reverses your
conclusion?

DiskKoppy

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Oct 9, 2001, 8:08:46 PM10/9/01

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Nope, there are still some at £6.99

DK.

"Richardr" <myn...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.162d939b2...@news.cable.ntlworld.com...

Sanddancer

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Oct 10, 2001, 3:34:24 PM10/10/01

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I phoned to reduce my package ;oP a couple of days ago and was told
that the lowest they go now is £9.99. I had trouble picking 6
channels from ITVs selection, I've had it for nearly 2 years and have
been hoping the content would get better. I was wrong.