BT is preparing to appeal against a recent decision by the Competition Appeal Tribunal that blocked attempts to force Sky to lower its wholesale price for its sports programming. This would reopen a five year battle between regulators and Sky over the price it sells its sport programming to rivals.
BT currently pays a ‘wholesale must offer” price of £19.07 a month per customer for Sky Sports 1 and 2, which it feels is too high. The telecoms operator then retails these two channels to its customers at a lower price.
BT is preparing to appeal against a recent decision by the Competition Appeal Tribunal that blocked attempts to force Sky to lower its wholesale price for its sports programming. This would reopen a five year battle between regulators and Sky over the price it sells its sport programming to rivals.
BT currently pays a ‘wholesale must offer” price of £19.07 a month per customer for Sky Sports 1 and 2, which it feels is too high. The telecoms operator then retails these two channels to its customers at a lower price.
Sky claims that it remains committed to a wholesale model for its content to open it up to other platforms. Given that its football coverage is expensive to secure, it argues that it is in its interest to distribute the content as widely as possible to spread the cost.
For its part BT has to consider giving access to the sports channel it is launching next year to Sky customers. Sky is prepared to consider buying BT’s football rights via a wholesale arrangement.
BT is a potential rival to Sky’s dominance of football broadcasting which is one of the key drivers of its whole model. However, there are those who think that BT has taken a big risk by challenging Sky.
As a BT customer, the absence of Sky Sports News from its offer is a big drawback: this was something I missed when it went off Freeview.
BT also has to consider the reliability of its service. I lost broadband for 20 hours earlier this week and until midweek the service was intermittent. BT’s explanation is that it is upgrading its network as it rolls out its new Infinity service. However, availability and reliability is key for a broadband product, particularly when it is delivering television.
BT also ha