Sky TV faces fresh threat

Sky Television’s grip on domestic sports broadcasting could be loosened by the arrival of a deeppocketed United States outdoorbroadcasting giant.

Pennsylvania’s NEP Group now has the technology to produce Kiwi sports broadcasts in New Zealand, or at ‘‘hubs’’ it has set up in Sydney or Melbourne.

NEP has taken over NZ Live, an Auckland company that films horse racing for the TAB and which also films productions for Television New Zealand, Maori Television and MediaWorks.

Sky has wrapped up broadcasting rights for the major domestic rugby, rugby league, netball and cricket competitions until between 2020 and 2021 and its investment in expensive outdoor broadcasting equipment has been one factor that helped it renew those contracts.

But NEP Australia president Soames Treffry said NEP could help the likes of TVNZ and Spark film sports events, or help sports bodies sell games to the public.

‘‘If rights come up for market, we will be there to support whoever the rights holder may be. In New Zealand there haven’t been a lot of options necessarily.’’

Alternatively, it could film events for Sky if it wanted to outsource the production of live sports, he said.

Treffry said NEP would give NZ Live, which will be renamed NEP New Zealand, ‘‘whatever resources they need to grow their business’’.

NZ Live operations director Ray Standridge said NEP was the largest company of its kind in the world and ‘‘proactive with changing technology’’.

NEP’s purchase of NZ Live came just a few weeks after Spark announced it had secured the rights to the 2019 Rugby World Cup, in partnership with TVNZ.

NEP was changing the way rugby and cricket was produced for Australian pay-television company Foxtel, Standridge said.

In the past, NEP would send a broadcasting truck to manage sports productions at stadiums.

But better broadband has allowed it to centralise the production of sports broadcasts at two hubs in Sydney and Melbourne, which means it need only dispatch camera operators to farflung events, saving money.

‘‘Increasingly, we are doing a lot of events for Fox Sports where we will have the main production crew stay in Sydney or Melbourne and the match might be in Perth. There are savings in travel and logistics, providing a more efficient outcome,’’ Treffry said.

He downplayed the likelihood of NEP wanting to manage the production of Kiwi Super Rugby fixtures from Australia, if it won the job of producing them.

‘‘We are respectful culturally, so while it would be technically possible I don’t think we would do that,’’ he said. ‘‘I can’t imagine it would be that welcome – New Zealand is a rugby club with 4 million members.’’

He did not rule out some broadcasts being produced in Australia on a case-by-case basis, but said its goal was to grow the New Zealand business.

NEP could put in a third hub in Auckland or Wellington as an alternative to using broadcasting trucks if demand justified it but, geographically, New Zealand did not have the same challenges Australia, he said.