Interesting changes going on at SKY. When does a sell share become a buy again?
Sky buys RugbyPass
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Interesting changes going on at SKY. When does a sell share become a buy again?
Sky buys RugbyPass
I left Sky just to join Sky Sports Now. Obviously a little bit of a bummer not being able to watch one thing on the TV and watch another on the laptop but then I don't have to pay for Sky Basic anymore which I never watched anyway. Had some issues with the app on a PS4 when I switched between the rugby and the cricket several times then broadcasting stopped working. But it restarted relatively quickly. For once its way better than SkyGo already which always was a dog.
The only thing that is potentially dubious about the deal is the fact that Sky are paying for half of the deal by issuing new shares. The current SP is very low compared to what a long-term investor would realistically pay to buy all of Sky Television.
So using equity to fund the payment right now could be wealth destroying to existing shareholders.
The only way this would make sense to me is if the US$40M is much lower than Sky would have needed to pay for an all cash deal. The existing owners may have been happy to settle on a lower purchase price knowing they will get a big block of Sky shares and can participate in the upside over time.
Otherwise, if US$40M fairly values Rugby Pass (or represents a premium to intrinsic value) and Sky just paid using undervalued shares...that would not be good at all.
Dug a little deeper to see where they currently have the rights to stream rugby...
"RugbyPass coverage throughout Asia (Zone 1 & 2) includes every game from the Rugby Championship, 6 Nations, Heineken Champions Cup, Challenge Cup, Super Rugby, Gallagher Premiership, Premiership Cup, Pro 14, Mitre 10 Cup, Currie Cup and RugbyPass TV.
Zone 1 & 2 countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, East Timor, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
Zone 3 coverage includes every game from The Rugby Championship, Gallagher Premiership, Super Rugby, Mitre10 Cup and Currie Cup live and on-demand and subscriptions are available in the following countries: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, & Herzegovina, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine.
RugbyPass subscriptions in Australia (Zone 4) include every game from the Pro14 and Heineken Champions Cup plus selected matches from the Challenge Cup live and on-demand.
Zone 5 subscriptions which cover the rest of the world currently include access to RugbyPassTV which includes all of our shows & documentaries.
Zone 6 subscribers get access to every match from The Rugby Championship, Super Rugby, Mitre 10 Cup, Currie Cup, plus RugbyPassTV throughout Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Noway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden."
So they do have quite a wide audience indeed, in places where interest in rugby is growing.
I did some back of the envelope math earlier...they reckon there are 120M rugby fans worldwide. Let's assume that seems reasonable for now, but remove 20M of those (to be on the safe side) since rugby rights are pretty well locked up in NZ, UK, Aussie and South Africa...
So of the 100M fans RugbyPass could potentially reach...If they could provide enough content to convince just 1% to pay US$15/month to subscribe every month, the earnings generated for Sky could easily be NZ$300M-400M over 10 years.
No doubt, Sky have ambitions to go far beyond that and I will be watching this space with interest. One would think, at the very least, this move puts Sky in a much stronger position to keep Super Rugby and other key rugby competitions far from Spark Sport's grasp.
I am getting more nervous with regards to the live streaming of RWC... May be its better to hit the Pubs(where SKY's boxes wouldn't fail) rather than rely on Spark Sport:)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/...ectid=12259661
Yes that is true - and if Spark are able to retain credibility (which a successful RWC stream would achieve) it will keep Sky honest. No way would Sky have implemented so many changes so quickly without Spark Sport existing. In fact, it is unclear if John Fellet would have resigned and brought Martin on without the increased pressure of Sports rights being challenged by a serious OTT player.
However...
Unfortunately for Spark, their content delivery model has so many moving parts. It is entirely possible that their hardware and software could do an excellent job, yet their stream could still fall over for a variety of reasons completely outside of their control.
They do have TVNZ to fall back on. I wonder though, if they had issues and had to switch over to TVNZ...and then TVNZ On Demand suddenly had a massive spike of users streaming...that could be another headache?
Let's see what happens. Even if they stream ok, their stream rate of 30fps is going to give consumers a relatively poor quality product compared to what many are used to. Will be interesting to see what the masses make of it.
Prediction is hard but I'm not going to let that stop me.
The link mistaTea posts above is interesting. Bur I come to a different conclusion than the writer.
The battle between SKY and Spark will produce a winner but it will be a battle victory rather than winning the war.
The article mentions some sports franchisers going direct to viewers but discounts this for Rugby because of unknowns about technical issues.
History is littered with incumbents who assume opponents technical difficulties will give them continued superiority on the battle field.
There a two factors which herald change, the AV1 open video codec and the high penetration rate of domestic fiber in New Zealand.
Boop boop de do
Marilyn
There have been a few hiccups, but overall not a disaster and most people have been happy with the service I believe.
They have a small audience right now though - less than 20,000, or so I read.
Sky Sport just released stats on viewership for the Bledisloe match. 500K satellite views, and 55K via internet (Sky Sport NOW).
So even though Sky Sport NOW is new and only has about 10% of Sky's sports viewers...it still had a lot more traffic than the Spark Sport platform so far.
When Spark have hundreds of thousands of viewers streaming key RWC matches on their platform, it will be a different story. I am not suggesting their platform can't cope with the traffic (I have no reason to believe that they will not succeed in streaming) - but if a certain % of their viewers consistently have issues (irrespective if the issue is caused by something in Spark's control or not) then the sheer volume of complaints could potentially be very large.
Streaming is difficult. Spark have certainly put processes in place to give themselves the best chance - but we will just have to wait and see how they go.
And they are a long way off from being able to boast a service that has the same quality and is as reliable as Sky TV imho.
I wonder how many views they had on Prime?
My personal opinion would be that Spark have so much riding on the world cup,they are going to put a huge effort into getting it right,but if you fancy a punt buy some Sky shares now and hope for a balls up!
Just to be clear, Spark have outsourced the livestream platform provision to https://www.istreamplanet.com scroll down the page have have a look at the numbers of concurrent viewers they boast and the big brand events they've hosted.
Yes I think their relationship with their platform streaming provider is well understood. It has certainly been well documented.
Which is why, if there are any issues, I don’t think it will be due to any issues within Sparks control. They have partnered with a reputable organisation that boast best in breed sport streaming apps etc.
If there is an issue for them it will more likely be due to all of the other moving parts outside their influence and/or customer equipment issues etc
Of course they may also stream the entire tournament without a single mishap or glitch.
Hi guys I'm in today for the divis.
Am I dumb?