Sorry, I meant shareholders selling bits and pieces of their shares.
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Sky is a June balance date right?
I called sky wanting to cancel because I wanted to change to fanpass, just for sports.
They offered me sky sports for the next 3months for free, with no conditions. I'm only on the starter plan which is like $25 per month.
Smells of Desperation to keep the subscriber numbers up for year end???
No doubt there will be pressure to keep the subscriptions up for the next reporting season.
Especially since the last season of Game of Thrones was only 6 episodes...and has finished before the magic June 30 date. Each year they would get a flood of NEON subscriptions for GOT, and then the majority of those subscribers would drop off soon after, but that would usually only be picked up in the next round of reporting.
Personally, I am not sure why people dip in and out of NEON like that as I think $11.99 a month is great value for the Box Sets ($20 if you want to throw in movies too).
I imagine they have offered you 3 months of free Sky Sport in the hope that you will stay on with your existing package after the free period ends (and therefore pay more over time). Their New Business offers are very aggressive with the freebies right now too.
Personally I think they should have just let you go to FANPASS since that platform is clearly going to play a massive role in their future.
If they want to keep satellite as a viable option for the masses, they need to drop (or significantly reduce) the MySky fee. That is, in my view, a significant hurdle.
Even if you just want Sport...the normal price for a satellite subscriber is (approx) $25 Starter + $30 Sport + $15 MySky = $70/month. Absolutely ridiculous.
Especially when you consider that each Set Top Box probably only costs Sky around $200 or so...and is written off the books over 4 years. How can charging $180 a year to rent the box make any kind of sense? I understand that old 'Monopoly Sky' was able to get away with this, but things are so different now.
As I have said before the 2 "starter" options should be $25 combined as most you can get "free" from Freeview.
I actually "bought" my MySky some years ago, have had it replaced a couple of times due to faults, and they also upgraded it to the HD version when I asked for it for no extra.
So probably in the 2 years or so it has turned "free" rather than paying the monthly rental on it and now giving you HD free my sub went down!
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that if you were to ever cancel your subscription you still need to return the decoder.
No doubt the option you used to "buy" the decoder (which I don't think is even an option anymore) is cheaper than paying the monthly rental after you have been a customer for a certain period of time - you don't actually own it.
Vodafone TV do not charge a set top box fee. With prolific OTT competition, if your business model still relies on a STB my view is that you need to treat it as the cost of doing business nowadays.
And I agree that, at least on the surface, charging $25 entry for 'Starter' is a bit cheeky given the majority of the channels offered are Freeview.
And remember, the entry is effectively $40 now in reality.
The vast majority of people in this day and age would expect the ability to record and watch later on demand as stock standard functionality. So just getting Starter + My Sky is gonna sting you $40 before you have even added any of the channels that you actually want.
Significant changes are needed, and I do believe that Martin Stewart is the man to do it.
And there it is again mistaTea. Regular loyal subscribers get stung with an inflated price. And unloyal subsribers are rewarded.
I've commented on this previously. I've been streaming from SPARK Sport. Other than a few teething problems...and of course lack of content....it's been pretty good. F1 especially. Bring it on !
Yeah, I am optimistic that they will get their pricing right. They have to, and the new boss isn’t saddled with the baggage of previous years and previous decisions.
Rather than offering Sky Sport free for 1 month and 3 months of free MySky to entice people...how about just get your damn pricing right so that you are competitive in the first place and people want to subscribe to your services? You shouldn’t have to offer these massive bribes to get people in the door...and then hold them hostage for 12 months by locking them into a contract.
At the end of the day, I would much rather have 1 million subscribers paying an average of $55 a month than 750,000 subscribers paying an average of $75 a month - even though revenue would be slightly lower. And the market would be much more optimistic about Sky too.
And if you gave people Starter + Soho + Sport for $55 all in, I think you would have no trouble getting (and keeping) subscribers. Delighted customers may even be prepared to add movies for another tenner. The customer wins, we win.
I think the new boss gets it (refreshing), but it is more the point whether Sky can revert to a now more accepted media consumption/price model, and delivery model, quickly enough to leverage their still impressive although greatly diminished customer base, while not compromising the long tail and revenue from ignorant customers who will persevere with outdated technologies and limited viewing choices as a consequence.
I think the winning strategy here will be to do the right thing by all of their customers by pricing their products appropriately. Relying on a segment of your customer base to continue being gouged due to apathy or ignorance would further doom Sky from a brand perspective.
Sky TV is largely restricted in terms of how their channels are bundled, however the way these bundles are priced is completely in their control.
In addition to their ‘build your own’ packages they could create some pre-set bundles like Vodafone TV.
Have an Entertainment package (starter, entertainment, movies + SOHO) for $39. 99
Sport package (starter + Sport) for $39.99
Sport Plus (starter + Sport + SOHO) for $45
Premium (starter + entertainment + movies + SOHO + Sport) for $60
No My Sky fee, and you can still add specialty channels like Star Plus, Bein Sports etc on top.
Clearly, I have just made these numbers up and Sky would have to work out what pricing points are viable. But setting prices around these levels would help reverse the declining subscription numbers, and improve Brand Perception.
And we all have to accept that the $100M+ profit days for Sky are over. Profits will be smaller in the future, as ARPU shrinks and content costs increase.
Shrinking ARPU is just fine so long as it is due to Sky adjusting prices down and lifting subscriptions.
Not what we have seen recently which is prices increase and customers heading for the door in droves.
To me SKY seems like one of the best value stocks on the NZX right now. Good dividends, a ridiculously low PE of 5 and a customer base of over 700k customers.
Sure they have been significantly disrupted but with a refreshed leadership team and still very strong sport rights I think they are reasonably placed to start making better decisions. They do have some good products - fanpass with lower pricing, neon with HBO content and SKY GO has been dramatically improved of late. Sky Movies has always been a weakness in my view - but when you're competing against the likes of streaming and Netflix it's never going to win a lot of customers.
Probably need to wait for the next report before I dip in, but in a very expensive market there is some logic to thinking about sky at this point imo.
Neon is a pile of shyte. We got it recently to binge watch a couple of programs, and we will not renew once we're done. I can see why they don't offer a free trial like everyone else. The user interface is terrible, the features are lacking, and it crashes at the end of most episodes. It is miles behind lightbox, and even further behind netflix.
The only thing holding sky together is their (ever reducing) content. If competitors offered the SAME content, no body would willingly choose sky.
What happens once Disney has their streaming service up, and they take back the rights to everything Disney, Pixar Marvel, Starwars, and 20th Century Fox? Does Sky lose all that content entirely, or do they face huge increase on purchasing the rights?
Add to that increase pressure (ie increased content cost) from Spark Sport and decreasing subscriber base and the new CEO has a massive job ahead of him. If he can pull it off it will be the greatest success story ever.
Can I ask how you are watching NEON? I used to try and watch it using the NEON app on an old SmartTV I had in the past, and it was absolute bollocks. Would crash on me regularly. If I paused a show to go and make a cup of tea, when I came back and hit play...it would play for 5 seconds and then crash.
However, when I started to chromecast from my iPhone all of my problems disappeared. It was much easier using my smartphone as a remote to search for content, and it reliably delivered a high quality stream. The smartphone app has a decent UI in my view. Still not as good as the Netflix UI in some areas....but I wouldn't personally describe it as a "pile of shyte".
There is no app for it on our TV so it's chromecast from either tablet or smartphone. Don't have any streaming or casting issues with any other service. Ironically the only issue we've ever had like this is with Fan Pass and again I'll never spend another cent on it.