Tag: Sky
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Battlelines: Sky, HBO & Max in the UK
I’m fascinated to see how Sky manages the seemingly inevitable launch of Max as a streaming brand in the UK. Things came to a head this week as Sky launched a lawsuit against Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) accusing it of a contract breach, in large part because of how a new Harry Potter series is…
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Premier League Rights 2025/26 – 2028/29 UK TV Deal
This evening, the first games in Amazon’s deal for TV rights to two rounds of the Premier League get underway. But Amazon’s coverage ends after next season’s Festive period games, because from the 2025/26 season, they will no longer have live rights. Amazon, you will recall, have the rights to a midweek round of games…
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The Premier League in an SVOD World – Running the Numbers
This week, Amazon Prime in the UK has begun the first of its streaming-only games offered to Prime subscribers. You will recall that during the last UK round of Premier League TV rights, a package comprising of the entirety of one mid-week “matchday” and all the Boxing Day games was offered. In the end Amazon…
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HBO Max in the UK… Or Not
Yesterday AT&T held an event called WarnerMedia Day that largely detailed the launch plans for their new streaming service HBO Max, which builds off the successful HBO. So lots of announcements of how you’ll be able to see Friends episodes and watch the new Game of Thrones sequel on their platform. From a UK perspective…
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What Do Disney+ and HBO Max Mean for Sky?
Disney+ and Sky Earlier this year, we finally got some detail on Disney’s upcoming new service, Disney+. The new streaming service will launch on November 12 this year in the US at a monthly cost of $6.99 – discounted a little to $69.99 if you pay for a year up front. Or you can pay…
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Das Boot
I first saw the original 1981 Wolfgang Petersen version of Das Boot on TV sometime in the late 80s. But it wasn’t until a 1998 re-release of the extended director’s cut of the film, that I saw in a cinema on Lower Regent Street, that I can honestly say that I saw it properly. That version…
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Sporting Value
The new Premier League season is well under way, and it’s at this time of year that the big sports TV players tend to gather up their marketing spends and splash the cash around, trying to persuade those of us who don’t subscribe that we really should be. BT Sport has an entertaining video of…
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Premier League Football Rights – Addendum
Four months after the winners of the main TV packages for the 2019-2022 Premier League domestic football rights were announced, the final two packages have now finally been sold with Amazon and BT picking up the “remnants.” First a reminder that previously Sky and BT essentially maintained the status quo in this rights period, while…
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Bulletproof
Oh dear. Sky One’s big new glossy action drama is pretty awful. Before I explain why, I will admit that I’m not the target audience for this show. But nevertheless, this show is just all over the place. Bulletproof is trying to be a 2018-vintage action cop show set in London. Imagine The Sweeney or…
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Premier League TV Rights – 2019-2022
The new Premier League TV rights auction for the UK has just got under way, with bids due in at the end of January, and the results announced in early February. Such are the scale of these rights now, that the announcement tends to be made to accommodate the stock market. If a PLC is…
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Facebook, Amazon and the Premier League
It’s nearly time for the money-go-round… sorry, merry-go-round, that is the Premier League rights auction for seasons 2019/20-2021/22. We’ve just started the second season of the current deal where Sky and BT between them have spent £5.1bn for the current round of rights. Recall that last time around, this represented a colossal 71% increase in…