The UK TV industry may finally see a real shaking up following today's announcements by BT about its BT Vision service and the three new sports channels it proposes to launch: BT Sports 1, BT Sports 2 and the recently acquired ESPN.
The decision to make the games free to subscribers and to set the subscription fee so low is taking BSkyB on at their own game: £15 compared to £42.50 is a significant gap, and with Freeview snapping up hard up viewers, Sky is fast becoming a premium product in a not so premium market.
What Sky has achieved is astounding. They took as essentially free product and got 10m homes to pay up to £500 a year for it. And the main tool in doing this was football rights.
Now BT are taking them on at their own game, further inflating the pay packages of top footballers, but increaing choice to viewers and, hopefully reducing costs.
The decision to make the games free to subscribers and to set the subscription fee so low is taking BSkyB on at their own game: £15 compared to £42.50 is a significant gap, and with Freeview snapping up hard up viewers, Sky is fast becoming a premium product in a not so premium market.
What Sky has achieved is astounding. They took as essentially free product and got 10m homes to pay up to £500 a year for it. And the main tool in doing this was football rights.
Now BT are taking them on at their own game, further inflating the pay packages of top footballers, but increaing choice to viewers and, hopefully reducing costs.