Sky TV takes NZ Rugby rights through to 2025

Sky scores exclusive rugby rights and NZ Rugby stake

Sky TV topped off another busy week for local sport broadcast rights by securing rights to broadcast all SANZAAR matches until 2025.

The agreement will see New Zealand Rugby take a five percent stake in Sky.

Sky's deal is comprehensive. It includes all coverage of the Investec Rugby Championship, Steinlager Series, Investec Super Rugby and Mitre 10 Cup. It also covers all other domestic Rugby including women's competitions.

North of NZ$200 million

Neither side put a price on the deal, details are confidential, but media speculation came up with figures of well over $200 million. In effect the value of the agreement is greater than half of Sky TV's market capitalisation. It is also far higher than the cost of previous Rugby rights in this country.

The move saw Sky's share price get an immediate boost of around 24 percent after falling a week earlier when Spark Sport picked up the rights to domestic cricket coverage. The share price is still down on the year by around 40 percent.

Sky will show games on its satellite TV service as well as its online streaming services. Some matches will play free-to-air on the Prime channel.

The deal was confirmed by shareholders voting at Sky's annual general meeting on Thursday.

Sky also cut a deal with the New Zealand Open golf tournament this week.

Stefan Knight to replace David Chalmers as Spark CFO

Spark finance lead partner Stefan Knight will become chief financial officer in March taking over from David Chalmers. Knight has been with Spark since 2003 and worked in a number of finance roles. Chalmers is set to return home to Australia.

Spark's Mattr colab incubator aims to boost online trust

Spark's Mattr business unit has opened a colab incubator. It says the new venture will "accelerate the development of decentralised identity technologies and solutions."

One of the first collaborations at the incubator will see teams from the Department of Internal Affairs and the Companies Office work with Mattr on the Verifiable Organisations Network. This is a design experiment that allows businesses to use digital credentials to establish and audit trust when interacting online.

Vodafone launches renewed customer service

Vodafone's upgraded customer service team launched earlier this week. The company's X-Squad team now has 12 people working in Auckland. More will join them in coming months.

Team members have been trained to answer more complex technical questions and will be assigned as case officers so that customers only deal with a single point of contact. X-Squad team members will also be looking out for systematic issues so that Vodafone can respond faster.

Google talks 'negative latency' for Stadia gaming

Wired magazine reports Google say its Stadia cloud gaming service will have 'negative latency'. While this sounds like something that breaks the laws of physics, it's, in fact, marketing hyperbole.

What Google means is that in the near future Stadia would reduce latency to the point where it is almost non-existent. Google says its cloud games will be even more responsive than those on a console.

One way to achieve this is to queue up possible data ahead of players hitting controls. A technique that will chew through vast amounts of data.

The broadbandnow website estimates this will consume 15.75 GB of data an hour. That's more than enough to chew through any data caps and potentially another nail in their coffin as they continue to fall out of favour with users.