F1 Fanatic

this article from the Daily Mail which claimed – incorrectly, as it turned out

Is anybody surprised by this?

Didn’t think so.

It’s worth keeping an eye on deals from websites like Quidco.com too. You can usually get at least £100 cash back for a 12 month subscription. Never order from someone in a shopping centre as they are just bagging this cash.

As for the assertion that £363 for a 12 month subscription is a bad deal, I think this is ludicrous. £363 for someone to install a satelite dish, wire it to your living room and give you a Sky decoder box along with 12 months of television is great value.

Do you expect Sky to incurr this considerable cost for you to be able to order 1 channel at a low price?! The cost of installation and hardware is offset over the 12 months.

If you want to watch all races live next year then sign up to Sky, there are lots of deals about. If you don’t think it’s worth £30 a month (exluding deals) then don’t sign up. It’s simple economics, if you think it’s worth the cost then buy, otherwise don’t. Moaning doesn’t get you anywhere.

@Adam
It takes a Sky technician under and hour to install the dish. The dish itself would cost Sky no more than £10, and the basic decoder box not much more.

Bear in mind also that Sky only ever has to install the dish once per house. Most people are going to be subscribing to Sky for several years. In the end, to cost of installation and decoders would almost be negligible compared to the huge profits they make from subscriptions.

£363 is a ludicrous amount of money if all you want is one channel. And if that channel is only broadcasting for 3 days a week (which it effectively will be- who’s buying Sky for “classic GPs”?), it’s even worse.

And it’s no good saying that you get another 200 channels for that price. I watch very little television, and even if I could afford Sky, I guarantee that I would never watch it.

I’d be happy to PAY for installation and a Sky box, if it meant that I could subscribe on a monthly basis (or even annually) to only the F1 channel. But would Sky do this? Will they hell…

@keithcollantine Thank you for making the call on our behalf. I’m not a fan of sitting on the line and chatting to call centres.

At the moment, I’m a VirginMedia customer. No Sky Sports, just the TV XL package. I’ve no idea if VirginMedia will acquire the F1 package. No idea if they do, for what price and what package I’ll need to have to get it. I may already qualify to get it with the TV XL package, but I’ve no idea.

They are negotiatiing as @W-K has stated above. (I have a link to that page at home.)
So I’m in limbo. I cannot just jump ship, as I may or may not already be getting the channel for free or for a cheaper cost than changing totally to Sky.

In reality I cannot afford to switch from VirginMedia to Sky to add on the F1 channel. I’m just praying for a miracle deal with VirginMedia.
VirginMedia TV XL does give me a lot of channels including ESPN America / Motors TV and loads of HD channels. So maybe that’ll be enough, but I have a feeling that this will be another Sky1 argument between the 2 corporations. Where Sky put in a silly price for VirginMedia to buy F1 channel, so VirginMedia threaten to pull their channels from Sky.

I’ve got to say I’m digusted by the whole debacle. Feel the BBC, those running it and those attacking it as an institution have let us down. Going to be streaming what races I’m able to watch next year (going to be away for most of it). Sky are a hideos coporation with awful partners and I’ll never give any of them a penny if I can help it.

It’s a shame but I guess I’ll be watching a lot less F1 from here on out. Never thought I’d say that but to be honnest I’m so gutted by the whole thing I feel kind of apathetic to next season anyway. More than that, I’d expect this to be the begining of the end anyway, Sky will keep increasing their grip till they’ve got it all.

@Scribe

As much as I dislike the situation, I actually don’t blame the BBC, or even Sky. The BBC has had to make cut-backs, and I understand why they had to part-drop F1; if it wasn’t F1, it would be something else.

As for Sky, I too will never give them a penny of my money so long as I can help it. I consider Sky a rip-off at the best of times, let alone this F1 business which is daylight robbery. But they’re a business, and as much as I hate to say it, Sky will probably do pretty well out of F1.

No, I blame FOM and Bernie. Ultimately it’s FOM’s responsibility to keep F1 free-to-air, and they’ve failed in that. Last year the BBC paid £45M for the F1 rights- that’s a lot of money, sure. But when you consider that Bernie Ecclestone’s personal wealth could fund this 35 TIMES OVER (let alone FiA/FOM as a whole), it really pales into insignificance.

If FOM really wanted to keep F1 free-to-air, they could. Even if that meant losing out partially in the short-term, more audience = more profit in the long-term.

@VettelS

I don’t think you’ve paid for many tradesmen by the hour if you think that doesn’t cost! Mine was there for closer to two hours. Also, if the boxes cost a similar amount to Virgin boxes (which I do know the cost of) then you are way off with your estimations. If you go back 15 years, you had to pay for all of these things up front when you signed up to Sky and it cost several hundred pounds then.

You are only asked to sign up for 12 months, the pricing has to cover that period as you are free to cancel after that.

Whether you watch 1 channel or 200 channels is not the point. What’s for sale is a range of channels and you can choose to watch what you want. I don’t go into the supermarket, take out a box of biscuits and moan because I can’t buy just the ones I want. They’re sold as a box, just like Sky is sold as a package and you can choose to buy or not.

At £7 per week it is not expensive. A little over £5 per week if you get a £100 cash back off offer as I did. If someone really wants to watch every race live then they can sacrafice a few pints or some other luxury every week. It’s their choice to decide whether F1 is worth that.

I watch a lot of boxing and there are currently 5 pay channels which show live coverage. Add to that several pay per view events per year. I don’t blame TV channels for this, I’d prefer if they were all on terestrial television but simple economics shows that that isn’t possible. I simple work out what I can afford to pay for and what I think is worth paying for. Simple. Moaning that you don’t get something for free any more doesn’t get you anywhere. You need to live in the real world.

How can you say the majority take a certain time unless you are a Sky technician! I sincerely doubt you would get any change out of £200 if you had to pay for the service to be installed yourself. Anyone who’s ever called out a tradesman in their life can see that.

What is in it for Sky to sell 1 channel? Their costs are the same whether you watch one or 200 channels. The amount of channels gives a choice and caters for all types of people. You happen to be only interested in F1. Sky don’t change my monthly charge just because I only watch the same 10 channels, several of those being terrestrial channels.

I initially subscribed as I wanted to watch my other sporting love, boxing. I had a choice to make, was boxing worth the subscription to Sky and the Sky Sports package. It all came down to whether I wanted to spend money to watch boxing and sacrifice other things or not watch any boxing. Many F1 fans will have to make the same choice.

Sky’s subscription is not “all or nothing” either. The basic package is £20 per month. I’ve managed to somehow end up paying a ridiculous £72.50 per month although this does include telephone, broadband and 4 out of the 6 packages. I’ve thought about dropping it many times but it comes down to how much I value the service sky gives me and is it better than their competitors. The answer has always (somewhat begrudgingly) been that it is worth the price.

I don’t have to pay for it but I choose to do so. I’d prefer to have that money in my pocket each month but it’s my choice to have Sky instead. If you can’t afford £7 per week then I sympathise with you but Sky aren’t a charity and you still get 10 races live and rest on a highlights package on the beep.