Yes, some good points. Some thoughts from a 'Devils Advocate'...

Yes, some good points. Some thoughts from a 'Devils Advocate' perspective:

1. This has a good chance of shifting (imo), but it may take 1 or 2 more years. - We have been saying "one or two more years..." for many years now. Regardless of what Sky does, the market continues to make gloomy predictions about future earning potential. Short of a miracle, I don't see why this would be different in a year or 2.
2. Also, in the face of recession fears, we are talking about highly discretionary revenues - Yes, very true. And some people who are really under the pump financially will no doubt reflect on their Pay TV services. The only rebuttle I would make to this is that in an inflationary environment where people are forced to cut back spending I think Sky TV will be the last thing to go for many. If you can't go out to the pub/restaurant as much any more...and you can't do as much online shopping for retail therapy...and you are staying at home much more to save money...well, at a minimum you want to at least have some decent TV to watch. Depending on what Sky service you have (ranging from cheapest NEON to a full blow Sky bundle) your savings will be somewhere between 50cents per day and $4 per day. Less than a decent cup of coffee...so I don't think you will see an escalation in Sky services being cancelled (you may even find that the current inflationary environment lowers STB chrun further and boosts streaming subs).
3. A tie up with a teleco would change this entire dynamic. - Spark can't buy Sky, Vodafone are exiting TV alogether. That leaves 2D and Mark Callander has figured out (I think!) that he doesn't need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy Sky. If he just develops good wholesale arrangements then he can get a lot of the benefits (bundling etc) without having to pay a bunch of money to acquire a TV business and then enter the content wars directly himself. The upside in doing so probably just isn't attractive enough given the risks and relative to what he can achieve just doing wholesale deals. And those wholesale deals cut both ways. No doubt they will expand their arrangement for NEON and SSN (currently they just give 6 months free to New Business if you take broadband or mobile) and they will do more to help Sky boost broadband and likely try to get them to do a wholesale mobile deal at some point. All good things that will help 2D drive their growth plenty, with basically zero risk.

The Sky Board do need to sell the business though. The recent crash in SP despite solid results, a decent outlook and the Board doing exactly what the market has been asking for (dividend resumption, capital return) really just confirms that the public markets are never going to be a good place for Sky TV (and her investors) to maximise returns. Getting the investment bankers to tap Private Equity and find a buyer is a good place to start.