I wonder how much this crisis is costing Sky and other broadcasters of sports content? Sky sports offered subscribers an opportunity to pause their sports package subscription - surely the take up on this must be high.
Information on the number of sky subscriptions is private. Regardless, can we do some rough guess work?
Note, this guess work is for Ireland only. In 2018, the Irish Times reported one in four Irish people have subscribed to a paid TV sports channel package over a twelve month period. Assuming these are adults (and they all subscribe at the same time), that's about one quarter of 3.9m people.
So say Sky Ireland has 975,000 subscriptions. Say then that ~95% take Sky up on their pause offer. They may lose monthly premium subscriptions to the tune of ~925,000 customers.
Going off my own experience, the bill fell by ~€35. That amounts to over ~€32m in lost revenue a month in Ireland alone. Depending on individual customer deals ( say +/- €5 on the package difference), my guess is that it could range from €27m to €37m a month. The €37m could be closer to the worst case scenario and may be for the entire premium subscription sports industry here, although I'm sure Sky dominates this. This is however all before any premium/elite subscriptions (i.e. the pubs) are considered .
Those subscriptions numbers might seem a little on the high side for Ireland. Even if we half the 925,000 figure to account for the fact that not all premium subscriptions of the '1 in 4' may have been for Sky Sports, losses into the millions would still be recorded (~€16m). We could be getting closer to baseline losses with this figure.
These numbers are of course complete guesswork, but worrying times for sports broadcasters all the same.