In February this year (2011) The Morning Advertiser reported that only 9.8% of pubs questioned in their Pub Market Report had a Sky TV subscription, with live sport being less important to a licensee than food, beer, other events such as live music, even tea & coffee. There is quite a large monthly cost to the licensee who wants to show live sport via subscription, this could be a main contributor to it’s absence in so many pubs. 43% of those pubs who do pay for a live sport subscription from Sky pay between £1000 and £1500 per month. But do BITE users seek out pubs that show live sport? Perhaps you routinely visit the pub to watch sport with your friends, perhaps you do just for national events such as the World Cup, maybe it doesn’t even matter to you at all?
Let us know in our poll below;
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If you have any comments you can add them to our comments section below, or let us know your thoughts on our Facebook page.
In my opinion Sky Sports in combination with other factors (overpriced beers, badly kept beers, deliberately served short measures, no real ale at all) is responsible for the decline of the pub. Televisions in pubs is definitely one reason for the decline as they get a crowd in to watch a match who are probably already tanked up and only buy a drink or two while the match is on and leave as soon as it’s over. While a match is not on the TV it is tuned to the bar staff’s program of choice.
The other issue I have is that pubs who buy into Sky are propping up the odious billionaire that is Rupert Murdoch, but I guess that most of the morons who watch this rubbish are all Sun readers anyway.