Apparently Premier League Pass is on the way out as far as Premier League coverage goes, having lost the rights to BeIN Sports.
And it seems unlikely at this stage that Sky will pick up the Premier League rights for next season from BeIN Sports:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c...
"...it's believed Bein has been trying to on-sell the New Zealand rights to the Premier League.
A Sky Television spokeswoman said that, while negotiations were ongoing, it seemed unlikely the rights would be picked up by the pay television operation.
"We haven't got the rights," she said. "Talks are continuing. Is it likely? No, but neither is the door closed 100 per cent."
A Coliseum statement said: "Our Premier League service will cease entirely from the end of May. We are not sure who has the broadcasting rights for the 2016-17 season. All we can say is that it is not us."
TVNZ, who have carried the free-to-air rights over the past three years, are not in negotiations with Bein Sports."
So, it seems likely at this stage that Sky will continue merely to screen matches from its club channels.
And no more free coverage on TV One.
It seems that BeIN mistakingly paid about 10 million dollars for the NZ EPL rights in some geographical confusion with Australia.
The gist from the NBR paper last week:
"New Zealand EPL rights have gone to an Al Jazeera sports subsidiary called beIN sports, which insiders say paid $10 million for the next three seasons as Campbell Gibson reports in today’s print edition of NBR.
Then ten million dollars, or $3.33 million a year, was just too rich for Spark. Lightbox Sport sells PremierLeaguePass.com season passes for $99, meaning it would need 33,333 subscribers just to cover programming costs. The joint venture has never commented on subscription numbers but there are indications it has fewer than 10,000 (PremierLeaguePass has 4301 followers on Twitter and 6783 on Facebook).
Sky TV could potentially get away with a third of that number of subscribers, given its Fanpass.co.nz already charges $299 a year (each) for Super Rugby, NRL and Formula One – but there was obviously a question over price elasticity.
But wait, it's not over yet.
Overnight, a person close to the deal revealed beIN’s real interest was in Australian rights but that, in the convoluted process of pursuing them, it paid an inflated price for the New Zealand rights. The Al Jazeera unit is said to now realise its blunder, and the insider predicts it might on-sell New Zealand rights to Lightbox Sport or Sky for a price below $10 million to recoup some of what its spent. And Lightbox Sport has confirmed that beIN is shopping around local rights. If there are no takers, beIN could launch its own streaming service in New Zealand."