Matchroom to leave Sky?

Something will give at some point. The Sky package model can't carry on forever. They've made a token effort with Now TV and having separate channels for different sports, but it's not enough. Hearn is acutely aware of this.

Sooner or later they'll have to break it down even further, i.e. a boxing-only package. If they don't, then I can see the likes of DAZN swooping in.

 

Took your advice on this Jurgs.

Even get to catch my local team’s away games on Ifollow for the respectable sum of £20 every 3 months.

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the ......

 

My provider charge 35 quid for 6 months, or 50 a year, can't go wrong can you.

 

No mate. The service is spot on too.
Only downside is you can’t record

 

Premier Sports were Setanta Sports UK that went bust in the past - Scottish football got poked badly and never recovered.

Cannot see many people paying all those subscription for sports as we already have:

1.Sly Sports plus Sly Sports PPV for boxthing, cartoon boxthing and wrestling mugths.
2. BT Sports plus BT Sports Box Offfice for boxthing, UFC and any other mugths not brainwashed by Sly Sports.
3. Premier Sports - showing La Liga, Serie A, Dutch, Chinese, Scottish Football and Rugby. Good value for £99 per year.
4. Amazon - showing live tennis and Premiership football during the festive period.
5. Boxnation - the home of very little boxthing these days.

I drew a line under the first 2 without Box Office as enough is enough.

Every new entrant will find it more and more difficult to attract new subscribers due to the saturated market already.

 

I dont think the UK will be a priority just yet. Maybe they can add some American sports and package it all up then charge a ton a year? Not sure how expensive the NFL/NBA rights are over here but wont be anything nearly football level.

 

Would mean zero 'casuals' would want Dazn as NFL and NBA don't rate highly. Nowhere near football. Basically until Dazn could get a good chunk of premier league football Matchroom would be silly to leave sky. The darts is huge at christmas. It'd die off hidden on dazn.

 

I dont think matchroom would take everything over anyway, just the boxing. If they charge 100 a year and promise no PPVs i think it could do ok. The problem doing that is they won't have that sky sports advertising machine behind them anymore.

 

Sky could easily to say to matchroom you take the boxing we lose interest in paying big money for all the other stuff. Which is why i don't think they'd risk it.

 

Im wondering if something will happen between Comcast and DAZN in the future. Comcast were the first to do a distribution deal with DAZN in the US. Comcast own NBC, which carries DAZN programming and run their ads, NBC also have their app that could be packaged with DAZN in the same way as Disney+ and ESPN+ is packaged. Comcast also own Sky.

 

The one I have has catch up, so can go through last 7 days tv. Also save the live events and ppvs on there.

 

I doubt it. Sky virtually don't give a **** about boxing anymore. Just look at the content they put out over recent years. They might want AJ but that's about it.

 

If you think sky 'don't care' about boxing you've not been paying much attention. They are not putting on world championship ping pong and ten pin bowling for subscription numbers. They do it to keep Matchroom onside. Same with stuff like fish-o-mania and the pool. Matchroom and sky have **** loads of content together. The only two that mean anything to sky are the Darts and Boxing. Both can fill arenas for much of the year

 

I think you are way off there. Adam Smith might throw a bit of a paddy every now and then but there’s not a chance in hell he’d let Matchroom away from Sky without a serious fight.

Press conferences at Sky HQ, being there ‘on the journey’, all the respect, packing out Wembley stadium for AJ, all these jollies to the States, puddings like Whyte becoming PPV stars, Katie Taylor and all that. The boom period might have peaked, but Sky will feel themselves intertwined and as responsible for the ‘Great times for British boxing’ as much as Matchroom and the fighters themselves. Theres no way their management wouldn’t want to be a part of that, and when even the most random of PPVs brings in so many buys at the drop of a hat.

Now with PL and CL rights sewn up for the foreseeable future, DAZN have probably put whatever (if any) plans for a UK launch on hold so the status quo is likely to remain.