Whilst reading an update about Unitymedia, I found this quote regarding the affect of losing top flight football rights on a DTV operator.
“Since Sky Deutschland has been the exclusive rights holder again, subscriber numbers have dropped considerably. At the end of March, arenaSAT only had 51,000 subscribers – a year ago it still had 184,000.
via Unitymedia to close down DTH platform | News | Rapid TV News.”
I have always postulated (and pretty much everyone else!) that the success of the BSkyB platform is tied up in holding onto Premiership rights, but even I may not have believed a platform could lose so many subscribers in such a situation but then could you believe the scale of the loss for Unitymedia’s DTH platform… Could BSkyB end up being closed down? Would all that be required is a strong alternative Digital TV platform (DTT, IP or Cable) combined with the loss of rights?
Personally I believe the situation would be more complex in the UK but this would be less to do with BSkyB and more to do with poor coverage of Cable and low bandwidth of blanket broadband connections.
