BT Sport

[Rdd]

The Sunday Times reported yesterday that a sale is unlikely to happen until after Christmas now.

(I do have a link, but pasting it brings up an unrelated motorcycle related story at the top of the same page).

[KrazyKei]

If BT Sport were to be sold to DAZN, what would you think would happen to their present sports coverage?

I ask because I seriously wonder if they would dissolve the linear TV channels and have them all streamed on their platform.

What do you think?

[Brekkie]

I think the value to DAZN in buying BT Sport is to get a foothold in the linear market.

[News Engineer]

Reuters are reporting that a sale to DAZN is almost done

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-t...022-01-12/

[thomalex]

Will be a shame to lose the BT brand

[Hatton Cross]

So a company which made a loss of over $2 billion last year, bids for a company for $800 million.

Seems like 'international debt refinancing' will soon be a new sport, live on BT Sport3

[Rdd]

I think the value to DAZN in buying BT Sport is to get a foothold in the linear market.

The value in buying BT Sport is to get the Premier League and not have to wait another 3 1/2 years minimum before it does so.

As much as those of us who are fans of other sport might not like it, the Premier League has been and remains the great driver of pay TV subscriptions in the U.K./Ireland market. If DAZN want to be a force in pay sports, they need into the Premier League and the renewal of the previous rights without a tender means they need to buy an existing player to get in.

Now don’t get me wrong, they’ll get a good portfolio of other rights, the ESPN affiliation agreement (for what’s left of it), and valuable linear carriage if they do decide to continue that (although I think they’ll want to move in the medium term to a D2C arrangement). But make no mistake they want one big thing out of this deal, and that’s the Premier League.

[Bennyboy84]

If DAZN does buy BT Sport I would guess that they are only interested in football rights which could mean they might try to offload WWE and I doubt Sky Sports would want it back so where would that go?

[Markymark]

Will be a shame to lose the BT brand

It'll still be there on your phone socket

[Steve Williams]

If DAZN does buy BT Sport I would guess that they are only interested in football rights which could mean they might try to offload WWE and I doubt Sky Sports would want it back so where would that go?

If they were only interested in the football rights, they could have put in a bid for the Premier League when the rights came up for auction, but the reason the Premier League ended up extending the existing deals is because nobody else appeared to be very interested. If they want to buy BT Sport as a whole, rather than just individual rights when they come up for auction, they seemingly want all that BT Sport has to offer. I don't doubt that there will be some changes after the purchase but there's no point buying BT Sport, with its strong linear presence and wide variety of rights, and then immediately changing everything so it's unrecognisable. You may as well start from scratch.

Besides, Virgin Media took over and rebranded NTL fifteen years ago and I've still got an NTL email address, so I think it's unrealistic to suggest there'll be radical changes immediately.

[Larry the Loafer]

If DAZN does buy BT Sport I would guess that they are only interested in football rights which could mean they might try to offload WWE and I doubt Sky Sports would want it back so where would that go?

Does WWE coverage hold much weight anymore when savvy fans would presumably subscribe to the WWE Network instead of overpaying for a linear TV subscription?

[TRWBUK]

If DAZN does buy BT Sport I would guess that they are only interested in football rights which could mean they might try to offload WWE and I doubt Sky Sports would want it back so where would that go?

Does WWE coverage hold much weight anymore when savvy fans would presumably subscribe to the WWE Network instead of overpaying for a linear TV subscription?

The WWE Network is only really good for the live PPV coverage and of course the on demand library - due to rights restrictions in both the US and internationally they can't air the weekly editions of Raw or SmackDown and so a BT Sport subscription is still needed to be able to watch these live.

Incidentally WWE no longer refer to to the monthly PPV's as such, they're now 'Premium Live Events'. It's a long overdue change in my opinion as the PPV system became somewhat obsolete since the network launched although BT Sport still think they can get away with charging £19.95 per event.

[Brekkie]

I suspect WWE is long down the list of rights which would make BT Sport attractive to buyers.

[bfgarmy]

If DAZN does buy BT Sport I would guess that they are only interested in football rights which could mean they might try to offload WWE and I doubt Sky Sports would want it back so where would that go?

I imagine Sky would probably take it back - WWE produces a lot of output so fills up a lot of schedule and also provides a lot of on-demand output. It's probably one of the better deals when it comes to value for money as you get more content than other rights for probably far less money.
Plus with Sky now having 'Peacock' on its Sky Q Devices WWE links in quite well as it's part of the Peacock streaming service in the US (and indeed in America that's now where they promote to watch from rather than their own network).

And even thought the amount of people purchasing via TV will be even lower than it once was due to the WWE Network now existing there may well still be the odd few who purchase the monthly events on PPV.

That said BT is by no means a necessity if somebody did want to follow WWE - the key bits of the weekly shows are available on Youtube and social media and pretty easy to find (though not the full shows) and the WWE Network is a far cheaper way to watch the big events than doing it via BT Box Office.

[Keith]

Possibly an unrelated coincidence but I spotted this article online...

New DAZN Division Will Support Original Content Production, Commercialization
DAZN has launched a new global content production arm called DAZN Studios to bolster development of original content on its sports streaming service.

Full article: https://www.sporttechie.com/new-dazn-div...alization/

At risk of wild speculation I wonder if DAZN Studios has been set up to take over BT Studios if the takeover goes ahead.