SKY Network Television demonstrated its flexibility and willingness to meet customer requirements by announcing yesterday it will broadcast top English Premier League football games.
The company had earlier lost EPL rights to Coliseum, which planned to broadcast the matches largely through an online format.
However, Sky has negotiated deals with Arsenal, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur to show all of their home and away EPL matches and games in some other competitions.
Premier league rules meant Sky could seek rights for up to four premier league games.
Those three clubs were the first in a total of four Sky would announce before the start of the season, the company said.
Craigs Investment Partners broker Chris Timms said Sky shares were sold off when the earlier announcement was made.
''This announcement shows how much flexibility they have to negotiate directly with clubs. The only big name missing is Manchester United and I suggest they will be in negotiations with Man U right now.''
Sky director of sport Richard Last said when the company was outbid for the live EPL rights, it received letters and phone calls from customers who said they either did not want to pay more to watch the premier league or for internet data.
Some said they did not want to watch it on a computer but wanted it on their flat screen television in the lounge.
''While we'd love live premier league rights as well, in New Zealand, many EPL games come in the middle of our night and, with My Sky, we've found the majority of viewing is delayed.''
Last season, the five top teams were Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. Chelsea games would be shown on free to air television so Sky had sought the rights for the other top teams, he said.
Depending how far each team progressed in the cup competition, it was expected each club would deliver as many as 60 match packages across the season - about 240 in total.
Sky also had the rights to live coverage of every match at the Fifa World Cup in Brazil and exclusive rights to the A League. All Wellington Phoenix matches would be shown exclusively live on Sky Sport, Mr Last said.
Britain's BT will launch its much heralded sports TV service today in the biggest challenge to the dominance of BSkyB since Rupert Murdoch launched the pay-TV group over 20 years ago.
Reuters reported the former telecoms monopoly, which has committed around 1 billion ($NZ1.9 billion) to the project, was stepping into an arena where others had failed, invariably outmanoeuvred by BSkyB in the battle for programming and subscribers.
But the deep-pocketed, 168-year-old BT has learnt from the master. While the battle over sports rights grabs the headlines, the underlying struggle is for supremacy in the triple play market - the bundling of television, telephone and broadband.
''This is all about broadband,'' Liberum analyst Ian Whittaker said.
''BT are not in this to get a new stream of revenues, what they're in this for is to persuade their customers not to churn [switch] to Sky on broadband.''
Sky, 39%-owned by Murdoch's 21st Century Fox, has dominated the British pay-TV market in the plast decade and seen off rivals like the Disney-owned ESPN and the Irish-based challenger Setanta, by using revenue it gets from more than 10 million households to outbid rivals for content.
For years, it built up its business by luring customers with the offer of high-quality sports and movie programming.
Eyeing an eventual saturation of the pay-TV market and rapid changes in technology, it moved into BT's territory in 2006 to offer broadband and telephony services.
The firm's market value has grown to more than 13 billion ($NZ24.7 million) and its steady growth contrasts with the roller-coaster ride endured by BT, which suffered two major profit warnings in 2008 and 2009.
The surprise acquisition of Premier League rights is the icing on the cake for a group that is now valued at double that of BSkyB.
