Spark, Sky reach deal on Fan Pass
Spark and Sky Television are understood to have struck a deal over sports rights that could turn their recent rivalry upside down.
An agreement will be announced early next week that will see Spark offer Sky’s Fan Pass sport service to its 694,000 broadband customers.
It may also open the door for Sky to show sports that have been snapped up by Spark, which include the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
Fan Pass provides monthly online access to Sky Sport channels 1 to 4 in up to HD definition.
Spark spokesman Andrew Pirie said: ‘‘If and when we were to come out with Fan Pass, some people might be scratching their head, but there is a commercial rationale to balance exclusivity with maximising the distribution of content.’’
He downplayed the prospect of an imminent deal under which Spark and Sky offered each other all of their sports content.
‘‘But the concept of saying ‘Let’s be open for those sorts of conversations’ is something that is on the table,’’ he said.
Sky spokeswoman Chris Major said it didn’t want to comment.
The thawing of the relationship between Spark and Sky may be a boon for sports fans, who can expect to be able to watch more sports on their chosen platform.
But sporting bodies could be the loser if that took the heat out of the competition for sports rights.
A lawyer said Spark and Sky probably couldn’t agree not to compete against each other for rights without breaking competition law, but wholesale deals were unlikely to raise the same concerns. ‘‘Generally, you would think the broader [the] distribution, the better.’’
A wider wholesale deal could allow Sky to continue showing English Premier League (EPL) matches beyond next season, through an arrangement similar to the one Sky currently enjoys with existing EPL rights holder BeIN Sports.
That is if Spark was successful, as expected, in securing the rights to the top football league tournament from August next year.
Sky was rocked by its failure to win the rights for RWC in Japan despite offering to pay ‘‘significantly more’’ than it did for the 2015 RWC.
But there has been no suggestion from Spark that it intends to try to take over the entire sports market.
Spark managing director Simon Moutter said a year ago that Spark would be interested in wholesaling Fan Pass from Spark and Sky chief executive John Fellet responded that Sky was ‘‘always wide open on those deals’’.
Stumbling blocks have included Sky showing some of its sports content on ‘‘pop-up’’ channels not available on Fan Pass, and an indication from Fellet that Sky would want any deal to cut both ways.
Previously, Sky has insisted that wholesale customers turn to it first for content rights, but that demand now appears to have fallen by the wayside.
The Commerce Commission warned Sky in 2013 that the socalled ‘‘key commitment clause’’ probably breached the Commerce Act when it was applied by Sky to TelstraClear.
But Sky is now positioning itself more as a ‘‘curator’’ than the single of source of content for customers, making that clause less relevant.
Fellet is expected to stand down as CEO of Sky by the time it reports its annual results in August.
There is speculation that Vodafone New Zealand chief executive Russell Stanners and Vodafone consumer director Matt Williams are among the candidates who are contending for the role.