With the Football World Cup approaching, the satellite broadcasters are now facing tough competition in the race to lure the nation’s armchair sports fans as rival platforms are forwarding their HD offerings. Sky reached a compromise with regulators today that will allow its rivals to offer its sports channels at reduced rates in time for the next Premier League season. Both BT and Top Up TV will launch cut-price subscriptions to Sky Sports channels in time for the new football season, making them available on digital terrestrial television for the first time since ITV Digital went bust in 2002.
BT is understood to be planning to offer Sky Sports 1 for about £15 a month, while Top Up TV is expected to offer Sky Sports 1 and 2 for about £20 a month. Sky today announced that it had 2.5m HD households by the end of March, more than a quarter of its total customer base, making it by far the largest HD platform in the country.
In competition, last month Virgin Media started offering a new HD box that allows admission to its HD channels for the one-off cost of the box – £49. Already customers can pick up ITV1 in HD and the BBC’s HD channel for the one-off cost of a Freesat set-top box, but by the time of the World Cup, more than half the UK will be able to receive HD channels through Freeview, which launched its HD service a few weeks ago. So will it be a threat to Sky’s growing popularity?
But Sky any day is the giant leader with its widest range of HD channels, but all of the rival platforms will be carrying World Cup games in HD. All but eight early-stage World Cup matches will be shown on BBC HD and ITV1 HD. Many of the new HD customers that Sky has signed up and there were about 100,000 more than the City had expected are existing Sky users. In the first quarter, the broadcaster added only 62,000 new customers, taking its total subscriber base to 9.77m. But persuading more people to take more products pushed average revenue per user on a 12-month basis over £500 for the first time ever.
The competition appeal trial resulted in a deal under which Virgin Media, BT and Top Up TV can all take advantage of the reduced wholesale price for the Sky Sports channels, but must place the difference between the new regulated price and Sky’s original wholesale price. If Sky wins its case, which is unlikely to be heard until September, the money will be handed over to the satellite broadcaster.
Tags: box 49, broadcaster, digital terrestrial television, football world cup, freesat, itv digital, itv1, satellite broadcasters, sky sports, sports channels, top up tv, virgin media