Re: Sorry but
No-one is taking something for nothing here. The sport is getting paid.
Optus make no pretense to adding value to the sport, in pretty much the same way that your VCR doesn't add value to the sport. Optus was providing a cloud VCR, so you don't need to locate your hardware in your house, where it is subject to power-cuts, mis-configuration etc.
"The sport" still gets paid for all the users, just as if the users had their own hardware. The issue is that the sport sold the same broadcast rights twice, for TV and for PCs/phones.
Optus is using TV licenses to allow users to record and play back to phones and PCs - which users are allowed to do by law. Telstra are whinging because they didn't think anyone would use their rights to receive the TV signal and push it to their phones, or outsource the process and Telstra paid for a useless bit of paper.
"More money for sport" is not an excuse to allow this to continue. The leagues should have just sold the broadcast rights, not try to sell them "for tv" and "for phones", because there is no difference. Both devices are just a computer with a radio link. Phones just allow you to make voice calls as well, which not all TVs allow you to do. The "smarter" ones with Skype even allow you to do that, so the difference comes down to, "do you use AC or DC electricity and how big is your screen?" Its absurd.
This is just money-grubbing sport and Telstra with a pointless contract. Stop trying to "make markets," at least Optus tried to do something innovative and useful for the consumer.
I guess we can't have that, can we?