The Sport Thread

Pro 12 TV fixtures announced, and the big news is that there is still no deal for NI terrestrial coverage, though the TBAs indicate that Celtic Rugby are still working on it. Elsewhere Sky kick off with a double bill on their first day and will have Leinster v Munster on 4th October which is usually the highest attended fixture in the league.

http://www.pro12rugby.com/matchcentre/index.php

According to a slide just broadcast on Sky News, the Ryder Cup will be broadcast next month on 'Sky Sports Ryder Cup'. I presume this is Sky Sports 4?

Yep.

http://sport-onthebox.com/2014/07/21/sky-sports-rebrands-channel-for-ryder-cup/

Some fairly important and surprising platform news.

Seems BT TV has got access to Sky Sports 5 on it's Vision+ platform, will be active from 1800 tomorrow on iptv LCN 524. How this has occurred is open to all sorts of speculation and conjecture. Will do some digging around and comment on how this has been achieved later.

NOW TV is now also offering a weekly pass for Sky Sports, beginning at £10.99 rising to £14.99 in November. Currently it's £9.99 for a day, which will be reduced to £6.99 until November.

http://www.a516digital.com/2014/08/sky-offers-7-day-pay-as-you-go-sky.html

Still horribly expensive,, for a non Multicast, SD service, when compared to the £150/year all Sky Sports channels offer from Virgin Media, and SS Satellite package rates.

Of course what they really want you to do is to subscribe to Sky, don't they?

At £10.99, it's virtually the same price as a Sky subscription isn't it? I don't have Sky, but the cheapest Sky Sports package I can find on their website says it costs £46/month - over a year that's only £20 less expensive.

For someone who has no interest in all the other channels Sky offer, I think £10.99 is quite a good price, considering.

Interesting to note that the European Athletics Championships are back to the older BBC graphics set. Pretty horrid host graphics, too - the Commonwealth Games ones were far nicer, IMHO.

Those are the standard European Athletics Association graphics which have been around for years with only minor tweaks - they've evolved in a similar way to the IOC graphics over the years.

Here's how they looked back in the 2006 European Championships:



. . . and here's the 2014 version:

They do seem a bit full on after the brilliantly simple Commonwealth graphics but they're nice enough - certainly better than the BBC's own graphics.

Only saw a bit this evening but is there no Michael Johnson for these?

No they're not.