It wil never happen. Fox knows that the sport channels drive their subscriptions and around 65% are predominately Rugby League focussed fans. If a sports only package were to be promoted, the other channels would die off, demand would drop drastically and most of Fox's subscripts would only be for the sport channel package.
i don't buy it - foxtel (and austar) has only about a 29% market penetration in australia.
if we say around 65% are rugby league focussed fans, 65% of 29% is 18.85%. so what that means is that 18.85% of the australian population subscribe to foxtel (and austar) mainly for rugby league.
but we know that a lot more than 18.85% of the population are league fans. so if you offer a sports only package (fs1,2,3, fsnews, sky, fuel + access to pay per view) for $25-30 a month, you could quite forseeably double the number of league fans with foxtel and increase your market penetration by a further 19% - at least.
you fill up your ads with ads for other foxtel channels, and you'll find very quickly that every man who signs up for the sports package will end up with an entertainment package for the rest of the family.
its poor business. i can't understand how these pay tv networks are sustainable, because their market penetration has not increased in the slightest over the last 8 years - yet they haven't bothered to come up with ways to increase it. aren't you better off having 50% of the population paying an average of 50 bucks a month (because the "super users" will offset the $30 a month sport users) than having 30% of the population paying an average of over 70 bucks a month?
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