The only advantage of the current deal is that basically there is still a bunch of people who havent got to grips with IPTV so those would be difficult to sell to, and it offers a fixed income to the EPL for the 3 year period so you could say peace of mind,
But the growth potential is extremely limited at this point and even what we have now is not sustainable, the current momentum is pushing sky more and more as a service only for the affluent with the price increases. Subscriptions decrease, and to compensate the prices go up even further. If you are someone who only cares about watching the big 4 clubs, who most of their games get aired and you rich enough that paying £100 a month for TV doesnt dent your wallet, then maybe you have your point of view. If you a fan of Brighton, Leicester city, Southampton who only have perhaps 20-30% of their games on tv at the absolute most, why pay £100 a month to maybe get one game shown on average per month.
Some people just dont like change and progression.
So lets say if EPL IPTV was sold for £20 a month which is about 1/4 of what sky and BT charge. On top of that every EPL game is shown and every game has a VOD, they would need to only sell around 2 million subscriptions to reach 4.8 billion in revenue (per year), that is very easily achievable. As a reminder the current BT/sky deals are barely that for 3 years combined.
We at a point where illegal streams are a better service than the official option, people can literally have an illegal service straight to their set top box, switch channels like normal, and they can watch every single EPL game. A lot of these streams are sold for not much less £20 a month, so that is a price that could be charged en masse. Do not under estimate those cost of a middle man, middle men are a prime factor as to why inflation is so high now days, everyone wants their own piece of the pie.
Its got to a point where illegal streams are competition to the official service, the only way I can see sky and BT holding on is the combination of 2 factors (1) they drop prices significantly, which they wont and (2) they start showing every game which isn't in their interests due to the fact they are scheduled tv platforms. I could see BT may possibly adapt, but not sky.
In 20-30 years we probably wont have scheduled tv at all anymore, it will nearly all be IPTV on demand.
Also I didnt want to say it, but if you want some kind of substance to it, there is already 9 clubs in favour of changing strategy. So it wont need much more of a shift for it to happen. The EPL has also shown in the past they are prepared to take risks, when they took on BT as well as when they broke away from the football league if it means growth in the long term.