I'm sick of pay per view!

[SAPFO]

What is the income and expenditure of an average boxing event? Maybe ftmpress can help us out with this one?

[Bricks]

Satelite tv is a total rip off and always will be.

Most of you Sky owners from way back in the day will know the story i am about to describe. Different country, different company, but the same ugly pattern repeating itself.

I now live abroad where the main tv service provider is Cyfrowy Polsat, we have been subscribing to it for over 5 years now. For the full package (films and sports) we pay approx £20 per month. Everything was included in that price, just the same way it was with Sky way back when. Cyfrowy Polsat have now just introduced VOD (Video On Demand), their version of Sky Box Office where films go for approx £1.50 - £2.50. Not all of these films are the new releases, many are from a few years back, or even old classics from long ago. So, we still pay our £20 package price, but the films we now get within that price are poor. If we want the latest films, buy a film from their VOD service at an additional cost, or go without.

All the big fights are shown on their normal sports channels, UK fights, German fights, American fights, the lot gets shown. They have no such thing as PPV for sporting events, yet, but it will come. Then, we'll be expected to pay additionally for the big boxing matches, or go without. No doubt it wont be long before they start pimping football matches as PPV also, and before you know it, we'll end up with nothing of importance in our so called 'full package'.

With satelite tv companies its all about squeezing as much kudos as possible from the paying customer. Its easy to say 'you dont have to buy it' but thats an ignorant take on the situation IMO. I paid/pay for the big PPV fights in the UK but was never happy about it, i knew i was being squeezed. I did not want to miss the fights however, so i grudgingly paid for the PPV service, and will continue to, but strongly disagree with it.

You know what that sounds like to me? Business!

You know, having a TV isn't a human right or necessity to life. And having that TV show programs and things that you want certainly isn't.

The price is set at what they think the market will handle. If the price is too high for people, then not enough people will buy it, and they'll have to reduce their price, and reduce the price they pay for films and boxing matches and football, or not buy one or two of those items at all, or just go out of business.

If loads of people want it, the price goes up, in which case they're offering a popular service that people want.

People also forget the massive risks that Murdoch took with Sky and the BSB consortium took with their platform. Both companies -- especially Sky -- were losing millions of pounds a week. They were both in serious trouble.

I hate to defend Murdoch, but the bottom line is that he took a big risk with satellite TV and he was losing that risk at a great personal loss and just about managed to turn it around. Now you begrudge the profits from that? Same with fighters and promoters. The fighters take a huge risk stepping into the ring, and promoters take pretty big financial risks for the big fights (unless they have a guarantee from the TV company, in which case the TV company takes the hit). So who can blame them if they want to make as much as they can out of it?

hahhaha Murdoch took a big risk?!! yeah right he's a mutil billionaire and it was hardly a revoluotionary concept giving countries with 3-4 state TV stations access to 100's of channels and controlling a vast proportion of the media in the process in order to push ones own agenda . He has done it in Australia the USA and the UK and India and is trying to do it in the Far East now. Anyway since when has boxing been a concern for Murdoch, this is about Warren and Sky Sports.

[Carbo]

Satelite tv is a total rip off and always will be.

Most of you Sky owners from way back in the day will know the story i am about to describe. Different country, different company, but the same ugly pattern repeating itself.

I now live abroad where the main tv service provider is Cyfrowy Polsat, we have been subscribing to it for over 5 years now. For the full package (films and sports) we pay approx £20 per month. Everything was included in that price, just the same way it was with Sky way back when. Cyfrowy Polsat have now just introduced VOD (Video On Demand), their version of Sky Box Office where films go for approx £1.50 - £2.50. Not all of these films are the new releases, many are from a few years back, or even old classics from long ago. So, we still pay our £20 package price, but the films we now get within that price are poor. If we want the latest films, buy a film from their VOD service at an additional cost, or go without.

All the big fights are shown on their normal sports channels, UK fights, German fights, American fights, the lot gets shown. They have no such thing as PPV for sporting events, yet, but it will come. Then, we'll be expected to pay additionally for the big boxing matches, or go without. No doubt it wont be long before they start pimping football matches as PPV also, and before you know it, we'll end up with nothing of importance in our so called 'full package'.

With satelite tv companies its all about squeezing as much kudos as possible from the paying customer. Its easy to say 'you dont have to buy it' but thats an ignorant take on the situation IMO. I paid/pay for the big PPV fights in the UK but was never happy about it, i knew i was being squeezed. I did not want to miss the fights however, so i grudgingly paid for the PPV service, and will continue to, but strongly disagree with it.

You know what that sounds like to me? Business!

You know, having a TV isn't a human right or necessity to life. And having that TV show programs and things that you want certainly isn't.

The price is set at what they think the market will handle. If the price is too high for people, then not enough people will buy it, and they'll have to reduce their price, and reduce the price they pay for films and boxing matches and football, or not buy one or two of those items at all, or just go out of business.

If loads of people want it, the price goes up, in which case they're offering a popular service that people want.

People also forget the massive risks that Murdoch took with Sky and the BSB consortium took with their platform. Both companies -- especially Sky -- were losing millions of pounds a week. They were both in serious trouble.

I hate to defend Murdoch, but the bottom line is that he took a big risk with satellite TV and he was losing that risk at a great personal loss and just about managed to turn it around. Now you begrudge the profits from that? Same with fighters and promoters. The fighters take a huge risk stepping into the ring, and promoters take pretty big financial risks for the big fights (unless they have a guarantee from the TV company, in which case the TV company takes the hit). So who can blame them if they want to make as much as they can out of it?

hahhaha Murdoch took a big risk?!! yeah right he's a mutil billionaire and it was hardly a revoluotionary concept giving countries with 3-4 state TV stations access to 100's of channels and controlling a vast proportion of the media in the process in order to push ones own agenda . He has done it in Australia the USA and the UK and India and is trying to do it in the Far East now. Anyway since when has boxing been a concern for Murdoch, this is about Warren and Sky Sports.

Erm, yeah. Well, every successful idea sounds simple and obvious in hindsight, doesn't it?

When it was losing millions every week, I'm sure it didn't sound like a great idea.

I'm not trying to defend Sky. There are all sorts of issues I have with them, their monopoly position, and Murdoch and his media, like Fox and the Sun/NOTW and the Wall Street Journal. But some of the things people say are ridiculous and generally ignorant of the business and financial world. Murdoch most certainly did take a risk. There's even risk in putting your money into US treasuries, the safest asset in the world, so I'm damn sure there's risk in sinking hundreds of millions into something that's never been tried. I wonder how close it was to going bust in the early nineties?

[hitman_hatton1]

i agree that ppv should be the big blockbuster fights.

none of those are on this upcoming saturday show.

i have the choice and the computer says no.

plus i hate paying for warren shows since the business with hatton and his petty attacks ever since. :>

[hitman_hatton1]

chris i pay for sky principally for the boxing,i dont watch most of the other channels included for 'free' i then think it unreasonable that i have to pay extra money for the big fights.
sky tried this with the football and started asking extra for the season ticket they soon had to stop it when rivalled by setanta and dont do it at all now - one price for coverage of all the premier football that they show, cant see why it cant be the same with the boxing

yeah agree with that.

ppv didn't work out with football.

love me football and i only ever paid for 1 match in the 3 seasons (i think) it ran for.

why are we the mugs all the time.