Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
That would depend on what (if any) alternative content is made available and what the alternative product mix is in the marketplace at similar price point.
The average consumer doesn’t have unlimited disposable income, and has a massive range of competing interests.
Is anyone else offering BT Sport for example - Sky it’s £25 a month. On BT it’s £15 a month. My marginal cost of Maxit above a standalone broadband package is less than this and nobody else can match Virgin’s speeds in my area.
.
|
Well, that doesn’t really help, jfman. Where is this alternative content of which you speak? The only half-decent channel we don’t have now is Sky Atlantic. And even that channel won’t have HBO content for much longer. I can’t see that contract being renewed soon, can you?
Sky is now in the fortunate position of having been taken over by Comcast, which will certainly help them. Maybe Liberty Global should think about taking over one of these American content providers and also to start commissioning original content of its own to help fill the gap.
Not many of us have unlimited disposable income, I agree, and they certainly wouldn’t want to waste it by paying out for fewer, lower quality channels.
---------- Post added at 19:27 ---------- Previous post was at 19:17 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
Ultimately costs are being driven up for end users across the board making a less attractive Sky/Virgin offering paradoxically more attractive relative to the rest of the market. Far from the new “low cost” future previously prophesied we are being asked to spend £5 here and £10 there for largely interchangeable minority interest “General Entertainment”.
The savings aren’t there for Virgin to significantly reduce the costs their service so likely they’ll just keep increasing the cost of broadband - ultimately for many users they don’t have a choice of a competing FTTP offering.
For Sky they can do the same on the basis of their exclusive content - in particular sports.
|
There are many Virgin subscribers who are not fussed at all about sport, so I’d hardly call general entertainment a minority interest.
I stick by my previous assertions that the streamers are much better value for money for non-sports content. The streamers are not requiring you to enter into a contract lasting more than a month, and so you can swap between them if money is a problem. You don’t need to subscribe to them all at once. And the quality and volume of content is far better than any TV channel can offer, or even all of them put together.
I agree that if you are a generalist sports watcher, streaming can be very expensive, but those who are interested in only one sport (eg football) can find savings by not subscribing off-season.