Quote: Rock God X "The EU disagrees with you. As does Ofcom. Both have adopted the position that Sky having the exclusive rights to live Premier League gave it an unfair advantage over its competitors. As I said before, things are starting to change, and the European Commission ruling has probably had a big bearing on that.'"
That is specific to premier league football. That doesn’t address a pay TV monopoly or any of the other things you accused sky of.
Quote: Rock God X "As I've pointed out, BT is a small broadcaster. That it has other business interests in other areas does not mean that it can compete with Sky in the business of broadcasting. ITV is much smaller than Sky. Amazon, again is primarily an internet retailer. I'd imagine Lovefilm's turnover is a fraction of Sky's.'"
BT is a small broadcaster because they choose to be. Sky was at one stage a much smaller broadcaster. They only reason for the difference in size between BT and Sky as broadcasters is because Sky invested massively in their product. BT didn’t. There is no reason BT couldn’t be a broadcaster as big if not larger than Sky, they aren’t because they didn’t take the risk, they didn’t take the losses, they didn’t invest in their product and as such they don’t take the profits or the market share. The argument is the same for lovefilm. The reason lovefilm is a smaller broadcaster than Sky isn’t because Amazon can’t compete with Sky for content or in the market place. Its because they choose not to make the investment and take the risk Sky chose to.
Quote: Rock God X "Well, for a start, when Sky had all of the rights, they charged for some of the games on PPV (£6 a game?), so it wasn't just a case of 'have Sky, have all the EPL'. Secondly, there is/was nothing to say you had to have Sky [iand[/i Setanta/ESPN/BT, so it didn't increase costs there. Thirdly, BT are offering the games for free to their broadband customers and at a lower cost than Sky on their own platform. So the ruling did absolutely nothing of the sort. It has brought some much needed choice to a market that previously had none without increasing costs one jot.'"
Of course it has. You are right, you aren’t forced to buy both Sky and BT. But also you weren’t forced to buy Sky to begin with. If you do want to watch all PL football you now do have to buy both. Also its pretty disingenuous to present moving from an offering where you could purchase only the matches you wanted from a larger selection (prem plus had 50 games to choose from) to one where you have to purchase a years subscription from a different broadcaster with fewer games (Bt have only 38 games) as an increase in choice.
