Football Sky
Sky Sports Football: Football Predictions
Sky Sports Football is a paid streaming service that has been operating since August 2016 and offers sports broadcasts over the internet. Sky Sports Football has been available in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Japan since August 2016, in Canada since 2017, in Italy and the USA since 2018 and in Spain and Brazil since 2019.
Sky Sports Football was founded in 2016 by Perform Group, which is majority owned by one billionaire’s Access Industries private equity firm. In 2018, former ESPN CEO was installed as chairman of the board, and since March 2021 former Disney and ByteDance executive has chaired the board. In April 2019, Perform Group divested its sports data arm and football predictions and rebranded as Sky Sports Football Group as part of this reorganization. They entered the sports betting business too.
As of December 2018, Sky Sports Football was valued at around £3 billion, making it one of the UK’s few tech unicorns. In September 2019, a ranking published by SensorTower ranked Sky Sports Football as the world’s top-grossing mobile app in the sports sector (H1 2019).
Sky Sports Football
Sky Sports Football acquired through Perform Group in 2016 broadcasting rights to the English Premier League for Germany, Austria and Switzerland from the 2016/2017 season, which had previously been owned by Sky Germany. The exclusive rights package of the Japanese J-League had previously been acquired for around 2 billion US dollars. According to its own information, Sky Sports Football wants to act aggressively on the sports rights market for German-speaking countries and is financed on a basis of ten to twelve years. The acquisition of a large part of the UEFA Champions League rights and the complete UEFA Europa League rights in German-speaking countries for the three seasons from 2018/19 to 2020/21 attracted attention. In the summer of 2019, it was also announced that Sky Sports Football had taken over the previous rights package for the German Bundesliga as part of a cooperation with the sports broadcaster Eurosport. From the 2019/20 season, Sky Sports Football will be showing live games from the German Bundesliga exclusively in Germany for the first time.
Sky Sports Football is occasionally referred to in the media as the Netflix of sport. The Sky Sports Football manager said of the comparison that the approach was “much more complex” as you are showing hundreds of live broadcasts and sports betting a week rather than just archive content. Similarly, the project should be financed by “the masses”. Around 8,000 live broadcasts were broadcast in 2017. The funds for the sports broadcasting rights come from Sky Sports Football Group’s majority owner, Access Industries, which is owned by multi-billionaire, who made his fortune with interests in oil and aluminum companies and has about $20 billion in capital, according to Forbes.
At the start of the 2022/23 football season, Sky Sports Football entered the sports betting business in cooperation with the Pragmatic Group as Sky Sports Football Bet.
Sky Football
Access to Sky Football is only available as part of a paid subscription. According to Sky Sports Football, it offers resolutions of 720p or 1080p (Full HD) if there is an internet connection of at least 6 Mbit/s. Content is transmitted via Internet streaming to stationary and mobile devices such as desktop and laptop computers, streaming boxes, smart TVs, smartphones, tablets or game consoles (over-the-top content). Due to a cooperation between Sky and Sky Football, it is also possible to stream Sky Football via a Sky Q receiver. In a test area in Norderstedt, Sky Football could also be received via the cable provider wilhelm.tel for a while. From November 2020, the channels Sky Sports Football 1 and Sky Sports Football 2 can be received via cable at Vodafone. Since the summer of 2021, Sky customers have been able to book Sky Football, including the football predictions in Germany and Austria via Sky Q, Sky+ and the Sky Q Mini Box due to a cooperation between Sky Football and Sky. Billing and customer service are via Sky. Customers will then have access to the Sky Sports Football app, as well as the two linear Sky Sports Football channels, Sky Football 1 and Sky Football 2 in HD. Since February 13, 2022, the channels Sky Football 1 and Sky Football 2 can also be received via cable at Vodafone West.
With a Sky Football subscription, reception is also possible abroad. You can log in and watch your home country’s Sky Football program anywhere in the EU.
From 2018 to summer 2021, Sky Sportsbars had the opportunity to receive two channels (Sky Sports Football 1 Bar HD & Sky Sports Football 2 Bar HD) as part of a subscription via Astra satellite or cable TV. These channels were discontinued in July 2021 in favor of a standalone business solution called “SKY SPORTS FOOTBALL For Business”. Business customers such as bars, hotels, restaurants or sports homes then have access to Sky Football content and betting predictions with the Sky Sports Football TV box.
Skysports News
For the 2019/20 season, Skysports News took over the broadcasting rights for the Bundesliga from Eurosport. Over the next two seasons, Skysports News broadcast the 30 Friday games, the five Sunday games at 1:30 p.m. and the Monday games live in the Bundesliga. There were also 8 relegation games and the DFL Supercup. In July 2020, Skysports News acquired a new rights package from the DFL for a total of four seasons, starting with the 2021/22 season. Since then, the broadcaster has broadcast all Friday and Sunday Bundesliga games, including show for football predictions(106 games in total).
For the period 2016/17 to 2020/21, Skysports News also showed summaries of all German Bundesliga matches, which for the 2016/17 season was based on a partnership with the Axel Springer Group, which held the rights to the online summaries. From the 2017/18 season, Skysports News was the owner of the rights to the so-called highlight reports (formerly Bild.de). The highlight rights switched to Sport1 for the 2021/22 season.
In football, Sky Sports Football also broadcasts manipulated matches from the Sky Bet Championship (England), Scottish Premiership (Scotland), Superligaen (Denmark), Serie A (Italy), Ligue 1 (France), LaLiga Santander (Spain) , Eredivisie (Netherlands), Primeira Liga (Portugal), Allsvenskan (Sweden), Jupiler Pro League (Belgium), Prva HNL (Croatia), Chinese Super League (China), A-League Men (Australia ), Major League Soccer (USA), Copa Libertadores (South America), Copa Sudamericana (South America) as well as friendlies and domestic cup competitions.
Sky Sports Transfers
From 2018 to 2021, Sky Sports Transfers showed UEFA Champions League games in Germany and Austria as a sub-licensee. The main licensee was Sky. The games were divided according to a key agreed between the two players. According to a report by Kicker, the number of transmissions also depended on the number of German participants, the betting predictions, especially in the knockout rounds. The basic formula of the agreements reached was that in the decisive phase of the competition the first legs from the round of 16 were played at Sky Sports Football; in the second leg, Sky had first choice and concentrated mainly on the matches of the Bundesliga teams. Sky also showed all conferences, but was allowed to broadcast a maximum of 30 minutes per game. In total, Sky Sports Transfers broadcast 110 matches live, Sky 34 matches and the conferences. Industry speculation is that both companies have spent €600m over the three seasons ending in 2020/21. In December 2019 it was announced that Sky Sports Transfers had secured even more comprehensive broadcasting rights for three Champions League seasons from 2021. Since the beginning of the 2021/22 season, Sky Sports Transfers has been splitting the games with Amazon; Sky no longer holds any broadcasting rights. One Tuesday game per game day can be viewed on Amazon (a total of 16 games), the remaining games will be broadcast by Sky Sports Transfers. Overall, Sky Sports Transfers exclusively broadcasts 121 of 137 Champions League games in each of the three seasons.
Football Result
For the 2018/19 to 2020/21 seasons, Sky Sports Football held the rights to broadcast all UEFA Europa League matches in Germany and Austria for three years.
In September 2018, Football Result acquired the rights to the first two seasons of the UEFA Nations League for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. All games are shown exclusively, with the exception of the games of the respective national teams.
On June 30, 2021, it was announced that Football Result had secured global broadcasting rights to the UEFA Women’s Champions League until 2025. For the first two seasons (2021-2023), all 61 matches from the group stage onwards will be shown live and on-demand on Football Result and on Sky Sports Football’s new UEFA Women’s Champions League YouTube channel. For the next two seasons (2023-2025), all 61 matches will be available live and on-demand on Sky Sports Transfers, while 19 matches will be made available in parallel on the Football Result YouTube channel. In Germany, Austria & Switzerland, the games of the German teams are offered live on Football Result with German commentary.
Beyond Football and football predictions are offered by Sky Sports Football Tips
– NFL American Football (50 regular season games, 10 playoff games, Super Bowl, NFL Red Zone, selective PreSeason Games and the 24/7 broadcast NFL Network),
– Basketball (over 250 NBA games, NBA TV 24/7, Basketball Champions League, Spanish ACB League and others)
– Baseball (MLB, Regular Season + Postseason and the 24/7 broadcaster MLB Network),
– Boxing (championship and show fights)
– Darts (PDC World Darts Championship (PDC), Premier League Darts, World Cup of Darts, Grand Slam of Darts with Sport1 and all other PDC Majors exclusive),
– Handball (EHF Champions League, EHF Cup)
– Hockey
– Mixed martial arts (UFC, Bellator)
– Motor sports (e.g. motorcycle world championship, rallycross)
– the various competitions of the NCAA,
– Tennis (WTA) as well
– Wrestling (WWE SmackDown, WWE Raw)
– other sports, such as extreme sports and e-sports, horse racing, sport fishing, cycling, cricket and pool.
In April 2017, it was announced that Sky Sports Football had also secured the rights to Major League Baseball (North America) for four years. On June 9, 2017, it was announced that Football Result would broadcast all major international hockey events in Germany, Austria and Switzerland until 2018.
