Sky Sports to show more live La Liga games than ever before

[Scubbie]

https://corporate.sky.com/media-cent...an-ever-before

For the first time, Sky Sports will show over 300 live La Liga matches throughout the season with a comprehensive Spanish football offering across its platforms.

As part of its unrivalled football schedule, Sky Sports viewers will be able to enjoy more coverage than ever before this season across TV, online and mobile devices.

Viewers can watch all matches outside 3pm Saturday blocked hours every week via Sky Sports TV channels, the red button and Sky’s digital TV channel, Sky Sports Xtra, which is available to customers through skysports.com and the Sky Sports iPad app.

As well as live games, fans will also be able to keep up to date with the latest news, previews and match reports from the Spanish league on Sky Sports News HQ and across online and social platforms. A dedicated La Liga section on skysports.com includes a transfer news service throughout the season and features in-depth coverage of the big players and top teams.

Fans can also enjoy live interactive commentary for Real Madrid and Barcelona matches while video and audio content will be available every week, including the “Top 5 La Liga Goals” and the La Liga Weekly Podcast.

Gary Hughes, executive producer of Sky Sports football said: “La Liga is one of the best leagues in the world with incredible players and unmissable matches. The way football fans follow the action is changing and we in Sky Sports are best placed to embrace that with seamless coverage across TV, mobile and online. For the first time, we’ll have over 300 live matches through TV, interactive and digital platforms. It’s going to be a fantastic season.”

Coverage of La Liga is part of Sky Sports’ schedule of football including 116 matches from the Barclays Premier League, 127 matches from the Sky Bet Football League, matches from every round of the Capital One Cup and UEFA Euro 2016 and FIFA 2018 World Cup qualifiers.

Non-subscribers can also see the matches without a contract through online TV streaming service NOW TV. By purchasing a Sky Sports Day Pass for £6.99 or Sky Sports Week Pass for £10.99, they can enjoy access to all seven Sky Sports channels and watch on a TV with a NOW TV Box or on a range of devices.

[lettice]

Nice little extra to have.
Although I'm a football fan, do not watch much European league football (think I ought to give the selfish man time settee or patio chair glued to sport on tv or tablet time back now and again), but will watch the two back to back liga matches tonight. Sorry my love
Great day from sky today, ashes, all day F1 coverage along with GP2/3.
My boys scrapped a win early after afternoon and now everton v man city.
How did we cope when we never had the choice across many devices, spoilt nicely these days
Shame that BT had to try and spoil the party.

[Scubbie]

and of course...





...but I could be wrong

[lettice]

Yes a very different sporting tv world compared to now.
Remember all those well, highlights galore, very little live sport then, but we are spoilt now its history forgotten.

Just realised sky have three liga matches in a row tonight and Kate Abdo is presenting, just love her linguistic skills, clever and beautiful

Lets remember the birth of satellite that started to give us the sport we crave and pay for;

[Scubbie]

Yes it has changed a great deal over the last few decades.

Sometimes you'd get to see a whole match, but typically it'd be a significant one such as the FA cup final. Of course such a match would be available on two thirds of the channels too.

[lettice]

Yes quite a revolution for sports and especially the way its the biggest customer pull to the isps of the world.
What's in store over the next few decades, who knows.
Well we will have cloud storage of our TV recordings, more online app/web viewing, a lot more iptv and a more choice and more fun negotiation times ahead.

[Scubbie]

I personally do not think this new round of competition is good for anyone.

It isn't just the Sports fans who are being asked to come up with the cash. People like myself are having to pay more for their Sky TV as a direct consequence of Sky securing the football rights at a higher price.

Too much money IMHO is being ploughed into football. The corruption within sport is widespread and that money is just going off to feed it even more.

They say football is the modern religion. Hmmm...

[lettice]

The odd thing though is for all the extras and the better broadband, viewing diversity and the extra content, whether it be sport or major blockbuster tv series from sky atlantic, netflix, amazon prime or the bt amc channel, the customers are wanting it and recent increases in subscribers for sky and bt show they do and are prepared to pay.
Also, my total cost for tv/broadband/phone is now lower than it was a few decades ago, with a much better service. More to do with getting great triple play deals with free broadband and half price line rental etc. and keeping them all under sky. As long as this goes on at the mo I'm happy.
As for non sports fans, suppose that's just higher percentage of the market being more in demand for sky/bt in the current competitive market, but there are current battles for premium now for movie and US tv series, as I mentioned above.

Its just happened in a similar way from the mobile phone companies, with the threat of sky and bt getting into mobile, they are now offering much better deals.
My vodafone £10 payg sim deal a month is now 4g (would of have to pay £20 a month for 4g before), with more text, emails and gigs of data a month in order to keep me. Competition sometimes works in your favour, but you have to use the threat to leave to get the deal, but thats no hardship.

[JPL]

1. Competition is relentlessly driving up prices.

We watch a lot of sport on TV, but no more than we used to a few years ago (before BT Sport started). However, to watch the matches we want to watch we now have to subscribe to both Sky Sports AND BT Sports, which has more than doubled our sports TV subscription charges.

It may or may not actually be so, but as Sky broadband subscribers, we cannot help but feel that in subscribing to BT Sports we are paying over the odds to subsidise BT broadband customers.

2. Broadcast, but not actually watchable

BT Sports claim that they will broadcast all European Champions League football matches. Presumably this will be correct in name, but not all will be actually watchable. The ECL qualifying matches shown last week via the Red Button were of such poor picture quality that we were unable to watch them for more than a minute or two.

Picture quality on the main Sky and BT HD sports channels is about the same. On Sky SD the picture quality is noticeably worse. On Sky Sports HD via RB the picture quality is OK, probably about the same as SD. We often watched ECL matches via RB on Sky Sports.

However, the picture quality on BT Sports HD via RB is very significantly worse than Sky SD. In practice, the BT Sports ECL broadcasts will be limited to the main match – they might as well not bother to broadcast the others via RB at all.

[JPL]

... the picture quality on BT Sports HD via RB is very significantly worse than Sky SD. In practice, the BT Sports ECL broadcasts will be limited to the main match – they might as well not bother to broadcast the others via RB at all.

It is now clear why. The BT website says:

All matches shown in HD will then automatically play in HD.

What this means is:

Any match not broadcast directly on one of the BT Sport channels, i.e. any match viewable only via the red button, will be shown in SD even on the HD channels.

(Fortunately, the quality via the red button in the Champions League now seems like ordinary SD, i.e. noticeably better than in the broadcasts a few weeks ago.)

Anyone spending the exorbitant £4/month for the BT Sport HD Pack should be royally p'd off about all these expensive Champions League matches being shown in SD only.

P.S. The BT Sport HD surcharge is £4 for 4 channels. The Sky surcharge for HD is £5.25 for ca. 70 channels. Which seems better value to you?