BSkyB has snapped up one of the last two remaining packages to broadcast live Premier League football for the 2010 to the 2013 seasons. In total, BSkyB obtained 5 out of the 6 packages with Setanta claiming the other one. Meaning around 80% of all live football will be shown on Sky.

ESPN were expected to make a late bid but whether or not they did or whether or not they just didn’t want to splash the cash remains to be seen.

Sky opens up its purse strings to splash the cash for more Premier League rights

So just how much is the Premier League worth to show on TV? £1.782bn is how much!

This is about 5% more than the current deal is worth… who said anything about a credit crunch?

Half of the broadband revenue is split across all 20 premier league clubs. A further 25% is also distributed to clubs depending on how many televised games a club appears in.

The good news for the football fan is that nothing much changes. Sky is still showing the majority of matches with Setanta still broadcasting the late Saturday afternoon matches. We will also still be hearing the Match of the Day tune on the BBC with their rights been secured up until the 2012 – 2013 season.

Written by chris

The Premier League announced yesterday that Sky had been awarded 4 of the 6 live rights packages for the 2010 to 2013 seasons. At this stage, no other details have been announced other than to say the remaining 2 packages are going to a second round of bidding, with everyone involved sworn to secrecy!  So, reading between the very few lines it looks like we can say that Sky will have at least the same number of games as they currently have and, because they are allowed to bid for one of the remaining two packages, could actually increase that number. Setanta currently hold the remaining 2 packages, so it will be interesting to see if they have bid enough to hold on, or whether any new entrants, perhaps ESPN, have done enough to join the party.

For the armchair fan, it’s looking as though the situation will broadly remain as is. For the devoted, a subscription to both Sky Sports and Setanta will be needed. Both these channels can be watched either via the Sky satellite platform, or Virgin Media’s cable service. Right now, the benefit of Sky is that, for an extra £10 a month, you can watch Torres, Ronaldo & Cahill in the glory of high definition too. For the occasional viewer, it may be that the Setanta service alone is enough and this can also be accessed on the digital terrestrial (Freeview) platform or BT Vision. For the very occasional viewer, it will be reassuring to know that the familiar opening bars to Match of the Day will be there until 2013 to bring all the usual highlights.  

Will ESPN bid enough to join the premier league party?

We’ll keep an eye on future announcements and let you know what they mean. It will be interesting to see what can happen with the near live rights (ie a broadcaster can show the games in full some time after full time) and on demand services. From a commercial perspective, it will also be interesting to see what prices have been paid this time around. Has the TV rights gravy train come to a credit crunching stop? Will our pampered stars still be able to afford garages full of smashed up Ferraris? Watch this space…

Written by chris

Government plans to inject funds into the digital and communications industries are due to be outlined at 12:15 today. Combined, the industries inject an estimated £50bn a year to the UK economy and the interim digital report will outline areas such as broadband development, public service broadcasting and digital radio. Broadband speeds and coverage will no doubt be high on the agenda with many reports stating that broadband coverage will span across the entire country by the time the Olympics stroll into town. This is no doubt good news to those living in rural areas of the UK but with such a large area to cover in such a short amount of time, is it a realistic ambition that people living in rural areas will be able to stream live video of the 2012 games to their PC with no interruption?

Fast broadband for all by 2012?

Some experts have estimated the project could cost up to £3.5bn, that’s a lot of money in any economic climate let alone the one we are in now. So is it up to the industry suppliers to shoulder some of the cost? After all, it’s their hip pockets that will be benefiting at the end of the day. Internet hours will undoubtedly multiply whilst demand for higher speeds will be greater than ever.

So to look into the crystal ball towards 2012; Virgin Media’s 50Mb broadband will long be a thing of the past, people living in the far corners of the UK will have reliable, speedy internet connections, and England to top the gold medal count?

Written by chris

The rumour mill is in overdrive this morning with news that BT may be re-entering the mobile broadband market.

Newspaper reports have suggested that BT are in talks with T-Mobile and 3 about setting up a new mobile network as well as having discussions about branding, cost and revenue.

BT may be setting their sights on mobile services

The talks are in early stages but if BT were to be successful they would once again be in ‘mobile’ competition with the larger providers for the first time since its demerger from cellnet in 2001. With the growth in consumer sign-ups to mobile broadband rather than the traditional ‘landline broadband’ BT has no doubt seen the opportunity to add it its bottom line.

If you want to see which providers currently offer mobile broadband click here to use our brand new mobile broadband comparison tool.

Written by chris

Google reported better-than-expected profits in Q4 2008, despite the melt-down in the consumer economy.

Google’s sales rose as established online retailers were joined by high-street retailers building their online presence – which together greatly increased demand for paid search (PPC). The increased spend by high-street retailers was evident as they tried to compensate for falling sales offline.

As a result, total revenue, including the commission Google pays to third-party sites to drive traffic, in the final quarter of 2008 was $5.7bn (£4.1bn), up 18% on the same period a year earlier, and up 3pc on the third quarter.

Google sends a warning shot to its big rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft

An 18% increase in revenue for a company the size of Google, against the background of worst economic conditions for many years, is one hell of an achievement and sends a further warning shot to Yahoo and Microsoft who still need to resolve their online search strategies, after their failed merger attempt late last year.

 

Written by chris

The latest research from Point Topic shows that there has been a big slowdown in broadband contracts sold in the last quarter of last year – in fact sales more than halved in the period, versus the same period the year before. 

Point Topic blame the sharp fall - with only about 200,000 new broadband connections in the period – to the economic slowdown. This is echoed by comments from the service providers themselves, who cite the huge reduction in home movers as a key reason for a reduction in sales of broadband contracts. 

As a result Point Topic estimate that the number of broadband lines in the UK increased from 17.04 million in the third quarter of 2008 to 17.23 million by the end of the last quarter 2008.

When you think that there are only approximately 25m homes in the UK – this does represent very high penetration – and indeed part of the slowdown will be simply as a result of the maturity of the market.

Point Topic commented:

“Within that total it looks as if BT and its resellers are suffering most. The ISPs using local loop unbundling to provide their broadband services to Carphone Warehouse, Sky, Tiscali and Orange did relatively well, adding nearly 430,000 lines between them. Point Topic estimates that Virgin Media may have added about 60,000 cable modem customers as well.”

This makes absolute sense as the BT resellers have very little to offer the consumer relative to the LLU providers, whose economics allow them to offer far more appealing price propositions. So what we are seeing is a shift in share towards the big LLU players. Indeed indications are that Sky and O2 were the biggest selling broadband services over the time period.

If you would like more information on which broadband package is right for you, why not call one of our digital experts on 0800 1388 388 or use our unique Smartsearch tool.

Written by chris

The newest kid on the digital TV block is Freesat (not to be confused with Sky Freesat), launched in May 2008. It provides over 80 TV channels free without monthly subscription.  

For the uninitiated, Freesat is a satellite and dish based service, which means its coverage is almost universal and does not depend on traditional transmitter strength (like Freeview). As such, it is clearly appealing to those folks in areas of the country where the existing signal strengths just doesn’t cut the mustard.

freesat provide over 80 free TV channels without subscription

But is it any good, and how successful has it been?

Its competitors are the usual suspects - Sky offers a free satellite service with over 240 channels. Virgin Media and BT also offer a free TV service, (with just over 30 channels) if other services are taken. And of course there is Freeview, with its 30 or so channels.

But, the key difference between Freesat and Freeview, other than coverage, is the availability of high definition (HDTV). It’s a small offering, with the BBC HD channel being the most obvious. ITV HD is, currently, only available on Freesat but, confusingly, only has a small amount of HD content on it.  

This HD advantage will start to evaporate in 2009 if, as Ofcom have stated, space is found on the Freeview platform to broadcast ‘free to air’ HD channels that way. Of course, Freeview viewers will need to go and buy a new set top box and it will be interesting to see how the box prices compare with Freesat (where high definition boxes have already dipped below the £100 level).

Freesat recently announced that it has hit the 200,000 sales mark in about seven months. BT Vision, which has now been around for a couple of years, announced in September that they have only 340,000 customers.  

So, in comparison, the Freesat service looks to have done well and the team at BT towers will be looking warily over their shoulders at the young pretender. 

We think the new Freesat service is a good addition to the digital market – first and foremost it’s free without any other obligations! And for those people wanting to start watching their favourite BBC programmes in HD, it hard to beat. If it’s not HD you are interested in, then there is a choice to be made between Freesat, and the same service from Sky. The costs are broadly comparable, there’s not a huge difference in major channels (although they’re not identical) and the technology is the same. Either way, the TV landscape is changing again. Before long, the new kid on the block will be the ageing rocker, but for now Freesat is a fresh face to take note of.

Written by chris

In an interview published in today’s Telegraph, Neil Berkett Virgin Media’s CEO confirmed what we have been saying on the Simplifydigital blog for some time – namely that Virgin Media’s strategic priority is on-demand content delivered to your TV and PC via ultra-fast broadband.

Pleasingly he also agrees with Simplifydigital’s mission in life of making complicated digital things, simple – hence the “simplify” and the “digital”!

 “The digital home is a very complex place. You’ve got DTT, DTH, IPTV, cable TV and wireless. All these things are now hanging around in the home and the poor customer is going, ‘Oh my God, what’s all this?’. We need to make it simple,” Neil Berkett says.

He confirmed that Virgin Media are not looking to go head to head with Sky in the provision of linear programming - hence his desire not to compete with BSkyB for football rights.

Instead he has focused on a number of investments in on-demand content, including deals with iPlayer, ITV Player and most recently Setanta Replay – coupled with the launch of Virgin Media’s 50Mb/sec ultra-fast broadband service. 

So it’s a simple strategy – build a library of appealing on-demand content and provide an ultra-fast broadband connection for customers to enjoy it with. But this approach does not come cheap as he revealed that the cost of rolling out the ultra-fast broadband service is over £100m. But this gives plenty of room for further increases in broadband speed (beyond the current 50 Mb/s service):

 “We could go to 100MB. There are no technology constraints and we could [do it] today,” he says. “We will always be a leader in this space, not by a neck but by a furlong. More and more, people want to watch, learn and listen online. If you look at the UK landscape, we are the only ones who can play in that space.”

Virgin are on the road to making UK customers digital worlds more simplified

Virgin Media data suggests that there were about 50m views per month on Virgin’s video-on-demand service in the fourth quarter of 2008, with more people using their on-demand service in December 2008 than watched Channel 4!

The target is to double this to 100m viewings per month by 2012, with 4m high-speed broadband customers by 2011.

If you want to find out which digital option is best for you then why not speak to one of our Digital Experts on 0800 1388 388 or click here to use or unique Smartsearch tool.

Written by lee

Simplifydigital’s latest research of 2,000 online respondents shows that broadband subscribers in the UK are paying an average of £16.50 per month and broadband and home phone bundle subscribers are paying an average of £26 per month (including line rental) for their services. This is way more than the best value broadband deals that are currently available in the UK.

This in part reflects the proportion of people on premium super fast broadband packages, but more directly reflects the proportion of people on expensive legacy broadband deals.

The best value broadband and home phone deals currently start from around £15 per month (including line rental) for 8 Mb/s services with very good usage caps – compare deals on Simplifydigital from TalkTalk and Tiscali for example.

These broadband and home phone deals deliver annual savings of over £130 versus the average that people are currently paying in the UK.  

The cost of not shopping around for your home services can really stack up

 

So there are big savings for those of us who are prepared to take the plunge and switch providers! But the research shows that, despite paying more for legacy broadband deals, many have not got round to switching broadband providers.

Indeed 45% of UK broadband customers have been with the same broadband provider for 2 years or more, with 15% of customers being with the same broadband provider for 5 years or more! 

So our advice is check what your paying a month for your broadband and home phone services and if it’s more than £15 per month (including line rental) – shop around, because you’re mad not to!

Written by lee

Virgin Media, announced today that it is bringing on-demand sport to its 3.5 million TV customers. The launch of Setanta Replay today on Virgin Media brings a range of sports content, including Barclays Premier League games, FA Cup matches, England home friendlies and World Cup qualifiers.

Malcolm Wall, CEO of Content, Virgin Media, said: “We’re always looking at new ways of bringing compelling sports content to our customers, across TV, on demand and online. Setanta Replay is a great way to watch the game when you want, how you want and, by continuing to add such great content, we’ll further drive uptake of on demand and keep changing the way people watch TV.”

Virgin Media is staking its TV future on on-demand TV with this Setanta Replay deal following major deals with ITV Player and BBC iPlayer. This seems in contrast to Sky who are much more focused on driving high definition TV (HDTV) subscribers (who now number over 600,000) and have a less well developed on-demand TV service. 

Virgin Media says that it has already seen significant take-up in on demand viewing over the past year across TV, music, movies and kids programming with the result that  Virgin Media now has an average of 45 million on-demand views each month, almost twice as many as the same time a year ago.

Waiting to watch the replay of your favourite teams match will soon be a thing of the past.

Setanta Replay on Virgin Media offers sporting content on demand for up to seven days after live broadcast. All customers on ‘XL’ TV package will have access to Setanta Replay at no additional cost. Customers on ‘M’ or ‘L’ TV packages can subscribe to TV Choice and get a whole range of on demand content, including Setanta Replay, for £7 per month.

Setanta offers some pretty good content including Barclays Premier League football, FA Cup, England international friendlies, 2010 World Cup qualifiers involving England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; Clydesdale Bank Premier League, Blue Square Premier, US PGA Golf, Indian Premier League cricket, Asia Cup Cricket, live Magners League rugby, top-flight boxing, Ultimate Fighting Championship and action from some of Europe’s best football leagues.

If you would like to find out more, why not call one of our Digital Experts on 0800 1388 388.

Written by lee