This morning’s announcement by BT Group (LON:BT) and Sky (LON:SKYB) is an interesting development in light of Disney’s (NYSE:DIS) intended acquisition of the brand. This certainly seems a better deal for BT than it is for Sky given that Sky will take BT’s sport content while BT gets Sky’s sports, cinema and Sky Atlantic channel, and could even gain more access to content further down the road.
It seems that there may be more at play here than simply a policy of retaining market share and slowing down churn rates between BT and Sky. Next February the bidding starts on the latest Premier and Champions League rights and these are not an insubstantial amounts of money which might suggest a more collaborative approach between BT and Sky at a time when brands like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) might look to drive the price of this type of premium content higher, at a time when content
The agreement of cross selling across each other’s platforms could help keep a lid on prices if they refuse to go head to head with respect to the bidding rights.
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