Really? They only changed production company for it last year.
What's that got to do with the price of fish?
It's been known since at least the Conference playoffs, that Premier Sports would not be the home of live Conference football on TV.
To be honest, I don't think Conference football is big enough to keep alive an entire service. It's good filler content for the likes of Sky or BT though.
Well it's actually quite relevant. Premier Sports tendered out that contract with the aim of improving quality (and reducing costs). You'd change production company if you aim to keep the contract with the Conference. Obviously in this case, the contracts were on a season by season basis but if it was a fait accompli that Premier Sports weren't going to be broadcasting it after this season, why bother tendering it? Most companies go into bidding with the view to getting regular work. I'm interested to know why Premier Sports were deselected by the Conference...most likely that the Conference knew BT could be an opportunity.
You're right, it's not able to keep a whole channel going and it doesn't suit anyone to be on a subscription only channel where it's the premium offering. The fans don't want it, and the clubs don't get much exposure. It's better bundled with BT because the offering isn't that strong (just Saturday lunchtime Premier League games) whereas on Sky, the non-league gets drowned out, so I reckon the conference have made the best choice.
According to the Non-League Paper, a £300,000 agreement has been reached between the two parties
Quote:
The contract permits BT to screen between 25 and 30 live games during the 2013-14
Quote:
By teaming up with BT Sport, the Conference has ended a three-year relationship with Premier Sports, which has paid £6,000 for each live fixture it showed since 2010.
Quote:
potential audiences set to rise from around 6,500 to almost 6.5 million.
So that's double the money per match for a far greater potential audience. And BT aren't making any of their own programming - they may well contract the same production company as Premier used. Who knows, they may even be obliged to?
Just got a letter through from BT to say we'd lose ESPN on Virgin, and that we could pay £15 a month to get it back with BT Sport 1 and 2... with several BT Vision and BT Broadband offers and, funnily enough, failing to mention that we weren't able to receive it on Virgin.
The Quality of the HD streams on the BT Vision box for BBC ONE, BBC TWO, ITV and CH4 is astonishing, much better than the Freeview OTA versions on my Sony Bravia. Similarly the two BT Sport ones are excellent too. Looks as if the live sport is going to look spectacular.
The Quality of the HD streams on the BT Vision box for BBC ONE, BBC TWO, ITV and CH4 is astonishing, much better than the Freeview OTA versions on my Sony Bravia. Similarly the two BT Sport ones are excellent too. Looks as if the live sport is going to look spectacular.
Wonder how BT are sourcing the feeds and how they are encoding them?
Wonder how BT are sourcing the feeds and how they are encoding them?
There's what appears to be an uncompressed version of BBC One HD available at BT Tower - I'd been wondering what it's there for, but that may answer that question.
https://customer.virginmedia.com/forms/btsport/2 says "we’re talking to BT about how we can make the forthcoming BT Sport package available to you" - which suggests that the intention is there, but the deal's not been done yet.
Whatever the deal, it's going to be expensive. Clearly BT have invested this money to get people on board with their Fibre Optic product. Given that most areas served by VM will now have BT FTTC available, it's in their interest to make the proposition on Virgin less attractive.
BT Sport channels have appeared on my Freeview+HD EPG now, not that I can subscribe to them with this box, one of them is showing a promotional loop, and the other two are encrypted.