next years tour and Sky TV

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Ravanelli

Active Member
Is the tour going to continue on ITV next year or given Sky's investment in the new team will they get the coverage?
 

Will1985

Über Member
Location
South Norfolk
Sky has shown very little interest this year in cycling even though they sponsor the GB squad. Even if they did show cycling, it would likely be pushed onto SS3 as a minority sport to make way for bigger sporting draws like football.
I would have thought that the competition to show cycling is between Eurosport and Sky as subscription providers rather than free-to-air ITV4 which has a contract with ASO up to 2013.

Actually ITV4 has been pretty good this year, showing several events as highlights programmes the week after, plus the Tour Series and obviously the Tour.
 
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Ravanelli

Active Member
Thanks Will. I have really enjoyed the coverage from ITV4 this year, I have lost several afternoons to the live coverage, the question about sky occured to me today while out and I couldn't find answers.
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Ah well ITV4 upto 2013 is the important bit. If it went onto sky I expect they'd actually pull the red button trick, as interactive services are exclusive to sky, no other operator in the United Kingdom has access to them. If ITV have a while to run though it's not an issue.
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Will1985 said:
Eh? I've been using red button on Virgin for the past 2 weeks.

Sky Sports interactive, which predated ITV's hid service by several years. It's not on the rate card so not on virgin media. Sky routinely put on football, cricket you name it on the red button because virgin don't have it. When Sky1 left virgin for 20 months they even put on football matches to wind virgin up. The issue isn't just a sky sports vs not sky sports issue or cable and satellite vs everything else that can't get ITV4 red button. This was my worry, not having any knowledge of the contracts that sky might buy up rights in 2010 or 2011 and bye bye ITV and onto Sky Sports red button, exclusive to Sky.

I genuinely didn't know when the contract ran out. It's good they have it for a while although the only people that can get ITV4 red button without paying something of some sort for it are freesat and other FTA services on satellite. Still, ITV4, the limited coverage they do show it is free to everyone on digital, better than nothing.
 
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