Tag: BT

  • The £5 Billion League

    You know how this is supposed to be austerity Britain? Well you wouldn’t know that looking at the sums announced earlier today as the conclusion of the next three years’ of live Premier League coverage were concluded. The total cost of the rights was £5.136 billion for the seasons 2016/17 to 2018/19. Sky has retained…

  • The Open Goes to Sky

    As has been widely anticipated in the press, today saw news that Sky Sports has won a five-year contract beginning in 2017 to broadcast The Open golf tournament exclusively live. The BBC will have a two hour 8pm-10pm highlights package. Sky is said to be paying twice as much as the BBC, and they will…

  • Selling Your Sport Short

    There’s an interesting piece in yesterday’s Guardian hypothesising that by selling itself nearly completely to pay-TV players, rugby union could be very short sighted and diminish the appeal of the sport. Regular readers of this blog will know that I think the English Cricket Board has done precisely that, and we’re ending up with a…

  • Possible Sale of Channel 5

    In recent days it has been fairly widely reported that Richard Desmond, owner of Channel 5, Express Newspapers and other more “specialist” TV services, is looking to sell Channel 5. Desmond bought Channel 5 for a knockdown price of £103.5m in 2008, and he’s run it pretty shrewdly, keeping costs down and turning a profit.…