It's as Martin pointed out in an interview last year...The...

It's as Martin pointed out in an interview last year...

The notion that all (or even most) of Sky's entertainment partners are going to ditch Sky and go it alone is fanciful. The economics just don't stack up - especially in a small town like New Zealand.

NETFLIX is already by far the most dominant OTT service. Then there is Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple+ and NEON. Don't forget the other two ad-supported on demand services - TVNZ ON DEMAND and Three Now...

So even if Discovery, HBO, Showtime, FX etc went it alone...how many subscribers could they realistically grab? I reckon most people are ok with juggling 2 OTT subs, but any more than that is getting too much. And the costs quickly mount up to the point you were better off in the 'bad old days' with just SKY. At least you only had one platform to navigate!

Some existing partners may still have a crack at cutting Sky out, but the vast majority will take the cheque from Sky and let them aggregate the content for their customers.

HBO recently renewed their deal with SKY UK. Population of damn near 70M, and they decided they were better off taking the cheque as opposed to taking their content back and launching HBO MAX in the UK.