My Sky broadband is going up by $6/month...now $75 total for 300 Mbits down.
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My Sky broadband is going up by $6/month...now $75 total for 300 Mbits down.
Yes, just about everything in the Broadband space has gone up in price. https://www.broadbandcompare.co.nz/ This is not unique to Sky at all.
From page 7 of today's announcement, "the board considers that there are no imminent prospects for an acquisition".
World Cup rights announcement coming... fingers crossed
GREAT NEWS!
This has been coming for a while. Did the market forget?
Sky TV is expected to next week be confirmed as having won the broadcast rights to the next four Rugby World
Cups, in a deal that will also see it offload RugbyPass and potentially look to work with both TVNZ and Warner
Brothers as free to air partners.
The pay-TV operator signalled in July that it was in advanced discussions with World Rugby about a "wide-
ranging rights" deal that sources say will include the 2023 and 2027 World Cups as well as the 2025 and 2029
tournaments.
The deal has now been signed off and an announcement is expected within days.
Will be interesting to see what is released in terms of finalised deal, terms etc.
Winning the RWC is a 'good news' story from the perspective of the brand Sky are trying to promote - Home of Sport. You can't promote that message as easy if your competitors have high profile tournaments. And within Home of Sport, in particular Sky want to remain Home of Rugby. In the process they have managed to offload an expensive investment they made which is now largely worthless to Sky as a going concern. Very good.
Now for the bad news. I remember discussing world cup tournaments with John some time ago - he was certainly never keen on the tournament because it never passed his Cost/Value matrix. The only time Sky won the RWC under his stewardship was back in 2011 when it was in NZ. By then he owned OSB (so could control the entire production) and he could maximise advertising revenue because all matches were played during sociable hours. Apart from that though he took a pass because the value just wasn't there.
This deal certainly sounds expensive - and if Sky have locked themselves into the next four tournaments that is a big call I think.
The majority of rugby fans will already have a Sky Sport or Sky Sport NOW sub. For the much smaller cohort that don't currently sub to Sky but would like to pay to watch the RWC (bearing in mind a number of the key matches will be FTA, a requirement of WR) then they are likely to pay Sky $39.99 for a month of Sky Sport NOW and then cancel. Depending on how the FTA games are stacked, you might only need to pay Sky $19.99 for one week if you are savvy to fill in the gap of good matches between the Opening Ceremony and Quarter Finals to Finals which will largely be FTA anyway.
In that light, this becomes a 'bad news' story for shareholders hoping to get a ROI. Winning the RWC becomes a pyrric victory. It is a very expensive tournament (both in terms of the cash component paid to WR plus all of the marketing and production cost worn by Sky) and revenue either doesn't increase at all as a direct result of having the rights to the tournament or only increases a small amount (and doesn't cover the tournament cost let along produce earnings).
You have summed it up better than most would MT...
Not bag holding RugbyPass must be a positive.
Hi Mista Tea, I respect your point of view, but not the point about John's Cost/Value matrix. Under John's management the company was going down hill. His Cost/Value theory may not be valid today.
I am sorry to have to pull you up on this, but that is a massive oversimplification.
Sky needs someone like JF in charge. Let's not forget that John came from TCI where he was mentored by John Malone. The guy knew what he was doing when he was in charge of Sky.
And he had a good plan for Sky's long term future once NETFLIX came in - merge with Vodafone. Regulators f*cked him and shareholders on that one and it has been downhill from there.
Well, the Voda deal was done in 2016 and blew up in 2017.
John resigned in 2018.
His 'Plan A' was the only viable plan for Sky TV. A masterstroke that he got that deal over the line when he did, enabling him to command an attractive valuation for Sky TV at the time (north of $2B). And there was no credible reason as to why that deal should not have gone ahead - the regulators made a mistake on that.
Every lawyer worth their salt at the time said that if Sky-Voda appealed the decision it would be overturned. However, my understanding is that after the Comcom rejected the deal the bankers got in Vodafone's ear and told them they could get an even higher valuation if they IPO'd. So that was the end of that.
After being CEO for so long, and seeing his grand plan for Sky crash and burn like that - I think it was only natural for him to take that as the right time for him to step aside and let some fresh blood come in and take the company forward. Key projects on the roadmap (like Cisco Infinite Video) were at advanced stages, a partnership deal with Vodafone was done instead, Sky delivered their part of Vodafone TV, key relationships with content partners were well embedded...
What more would you expect from him? Sky TV was still gushing huge amounts of FCF when Martin took over and the market cap was still $800M+ despite the headwinds.
I don't think we can blame what has happened to Sky (and the SP) over the last 4 or 5 years on John. And it's not just because I really admire the guy - you have no idea how smart this guy is and the depths of his knowledge until you spend time speaking with him - the historical facts of key events leading up to his resignation don't support this idea that JF ran Sky into the ground and gave Martin a hospital pass. Quite the opposite actually.