BT Sport

John Clark1

Just a quick one: I've been out of mainstream circulation for a while: how do you get & watch BT Sport?

Do you have to have a BT landline/internet?

Ta muchly

E to the J to the C to the 1

city_boy

It's free if you have BT broadband. £3/month if you want HD.
If you don't have BT broadband then you have to pay for it, me thinks.

seanoconn

You need BT broadband but I think you also need to have Sky in order to watch it on telly. Although you can watch it online.

seanoconn

That might be b0llox ^^

plowmar

I've currently got B T Sport with Virgin - free till New Year, so there will obviously be a charge after that, but as I am not interested in the superannuated Premier League footballers then I am not bothered.

I smetimes regret that I am from an age when you had to take someones legs away before they got a penalty now it seems that if you exhale as they are going past they tumble over. Rant! Rant! now now mr P calm down....

John Clark1

So I have to subscribe/get BT broadband? Bollox. Oh well, streaming Rai 1 here we come. Again.

upperoilcan

You dont need a Sky box to get BT Sport,although if you have the broadband you can opt to have it through your sky box,other than that you can get it through a You View box,or as already mentioned a Virgin box.

John Clark1

Hmmm - I don't have BT, Sky or Virgin. Out of those companies' areas.

Streaming it is then.

sloppyschleckonds

Do they have any cycling coverage?

upperoilcan

SloppySchleckonds wrote:

Do they have any cycling coverage?

Not yet,mainly football although this is going to change in the future.

k-dog

I have it on Virgin too but I don't think I've watched much on it.

daviesee

Had it for free on broadband since August as I am a BT customer.
Yet to find anything worth watching.

joelsim

Hmmm, can't help feeling this latest BT Sport deal is possibly the worst thing to happen for the average footie fan since sliced bread. Way overpriced, all it will do is feed the teams and the players of the top 4 clubs, thus creating an even bigger gap between the haves and have-nots.

Fans will end up paying higher prices to help fund the next wage boom, whilst having to purchase BT Sport and SKY subscriptions.

And in my view it won't work, a bridge too far and the people at BT who have just wasted the best part of £900m should be ashamed of themselves.

Time will tell I guess.

John Clark1

Why should they be ashamed of themselves? It's called business.

You don't honestly think that Sky/the FA/BT/those Irish dudes/Eurosport give a flying fig about the average sports fan do you?

joelsim

John Clark1 wrote:

Why should they be ashamed of themselves? It's called business.

You don't honestly think that Sky/the FA/BT/those Irish dudes/Eurosport give a flying fig about the average sports fan do you?

I don't, no.

But to be honest I think the BT Sport strategy is incredibly poor, it is doomed to failure on every level. They will have to fling many many more millions to get coverage up to SKY standards, SKY aren't going to lie down on the Premier League as it's their whole raison d'etre...cue bidding wars where the only person who loses out is the fan, and the only people who gain will be the already way overpaid players. To add to this it will just ensure the top clubs in the CL get richer (fair play and all that) and the other teams will just fall further and further behind.

So I guess what I should have said is that if you support ManUre, ManShitty, Chelski or Arsenal then you will be ok, although a little poorer, if you support anyone else then goodnight Vienna.

As I said time will tell.

southdownswolf

So BT are doing exactly what SKY did 20 years ago, but NOW it's wrong?
Sky might not lay down on the Premier League, but if they are as ignorant about it as they were with the European football, then they will lose it. BT already have a share in the Premier League football, and have quite a few of the European leagues also.

verylonglegs

southdownswolf wrote:

So BT are doing exactly what SKY did 20 years ago, but NOW it's wrong?

Indeed, It's almost incredible to read comments on various sites which read along the lines that Sky are the good guys who have somehow lost out in this. Initially it sounds like BT have overpaid for it, half the problem with the Champions League is that it rarely gets interesting before the knockout stages in the spring so they've paid many millions for what could be only a handful of matches that are watchable. Although that's probably just my own view, I guess there are football heads out there that will watch pretty much any televised game.

sniper68

BT also have "exclusive" UK rights to live MotoGP from 2014.I predict they might have "exclusive" UK rights to air the Grand Tours live before long.
As said before BT are just doing what SKY did in the 90's.Sky had better be careful as they now appear to have a credible opponent who have just splashed the best part of £900m on just three years of Champions/Europa League football,who already have a foot in the door on Live Premier League Football and by the looks of it are aiming for bigger things.
Good on them.

Mikey23

I agree good on em... Sky have had it their own way for too long

John Clark1

southdownswolf wrote:

So BT are doing exactly what SKY did 20 years ago, but NOW it's wrong?
Sky might not lay down on the Premier League, but if they are as ignorant about it as they were with the European football, then they will lose it. BT already have a share in the Premier League football, and have quite a few of the European leagues also.

Sky are not ignorant about the footy - they didn't get to where they are today by not knowing and understanding the vox pop re sport: they obviously have a plan/are glad to see the back of the huge bills for the footy and will plough their hundreds of millions into something else.

You've got to remember - none of these decisions are taken by you, me and Pina down the pub - these guys are at the very top of their game when it comes to making these decisions. Sometimes as well they take a punt: if it comes off it comes off, if not: then well, BT charges will go up to cover it all.

As an aside, anyone know BTs profits for the year offhand? I reckon this little football shenanigan won't bite in too deeply .......

joelsim

I have no love for SKY either, but they can't get rid of football, half, if not 3/4 of their business plan is based on it. It will just become a bidding war which will help no-one except for the players.

Funnily enough since I posted I have seen this.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... s-football

Kind of sums it up.

joelsim

Not sure they have dropped the ball tbh. I think BT have screwed up massively. Everything about this deal is wrong. Overpaid, the BT brand doesn't work in this context, the fan loses out, the gap between 4 teams and everyone else gets bigger. It's a shambles. My 6 year old son could have come up with a better business plan than this.

southdownswolf

As I see it, this is like a loss leader for BT. They are aiming to take away football from SKY by over bidding, however they will gain an enormous customer base if they can wrestle it away from SKY. They already have some of the Premier games, which is the big money spinner and they may well win the rest of the Premier package next time.

SKY didn't expect the whole of the Champions League and Europa cup to go to one bidder and I would imagine that they expected part of the deal to go to "free-to-air" channels. Letting what appears to be a credible rival gain a strong foothold in the football market will be worrying SKY. By how much, we will find out when the next PL bidding takes place.

upperoilcan

BT must be doing something right as their shares are continuing to rise....

This is in part a lot to do with BT Sport..

laurentian

southdownswolf wrote:

As I see it, this is like a loss leader for BT. They are aiming to take away football from SKY by over bidding, however they will gain an enormous customer base if they can wrestle it away from SKY. They already have some of the Premier games, which is the big money spinner and they may well win the rest of the Premier package next time.

I have a recently retired friend who, until recently, was a pretty "Grand Fromage" at BT and who still does consultancy work for them.

The above from southdownswolf is just about right.

Perhaps puzzlingly, shares in BT, ITV and Sky were all down this morning.

John Clark1

upperoilcan wrote:

BT must be doing something right as their shares are continuing to rise....

This is in part a lot to do with BT Sport..

Shares are down this morning together with BSKYB .....

John Clark1

Jim453.2 wrote:

'at the very top of their game'

Brilliant.

SKY apologists everywhere.

They've dropped the ball here.

Errr - actually no. Utterly incorrect.

If you do your research then you'll find that I actually detest Sky and all facets of the fascistic organisation (and yes, I'm the first to mock Team Sky as well much to the chagrin of several people on here).

I don't have Sky or any satellite tv (and don't want it), have no shares Sky and don't know anybody who works there. I can't stand Murdoch and his family and the filth that they litter the nation with.

No sign of being an apologist anywhere - just a realist and understanding how business works - which it seems that you don't.

So boo ya sucks to you 3 post man.

seanoconn

John Clark1 wrote:

Jim453.2 wrote:

'at the very top of their game'

Brilliant.

SKY apologists everywhere.

They've dropped the ball here.

Errr - actually no. Utterly incorrect.

If you do your research then you'll find that I actually detest Sky and all facets of the fascistic organisation (and yes, I'm the first to mock Team Sky as well much to the chagrin of several people on here).

I don't have Sky or any satellite tv (and don't want it), have no shares Sky and don't know anybody who works there. I can't stand Murdoch and his family and the filth that they litter the nation with.

No sign of being an apologist anywhere - just a realist and understanding how business works - which it seems that you don't.

So boo ya sucks to you 3 post man.

+1 boo ya sucks

arran77

seanoconn wrote:

John Clark1 wrote:

Jim453.2 wrote:

'at the very top of their game'

Brilliant.

SKY apologists everywhere.

They've dropped the ball here.

Errr - actually no. Utterly incorrect.

If you do your research then you'll find that I actually detest Sky and all facets of the fascistic organisation (and yes, I'm the first to mock Team Sky as well much to the chagrin of several people on here).

I don't have Sky or any satellite tv (and don't want it), have no shares Sky and don't know anybody who works there. I can't stand Murdoch and his family and the filth that they litter the nation with.

No sign of being an apologist anywhere - just a realist and understanding how business works - which it seems that you don't.

So boo ya sucks to you 3 post man.

+1 boo ya sucks

Yeah, you tell him

upperoilcan

John Clark1 wrote:

Shares are down this morning together with BSKYB .....

Ya,i saw that,they are picking up already,by rights they should stay between £3.60-£3.85 for a while,next year if the forcasts are to be believed then they should go onto around 4 quid a pop.

southdownswolf

Bt shares up 0.43%
BSKYB down 10.43%

I think the shockwave was felt at BSKYB....