The stock market has barely reacted to Ofcom's plans for a review of the UK pay-TV market, with analysts predicting that BSkyB will successfully head off the threat to its leading position in the sector.
Today's announcement of the terms of the communications regulator's consultation on competition in the pay-TV market in fact saw a small rise in Sky's share price, by 2p to 603.5p at around 11.30am GMT today.
The consulation was prompted by a submission from Sky's principal rivals BT, Setanta, Top Up TV and Virgin Media that the satellite broadcaster runs a "vicious circle" of control in the pay-TV sector because of its dominance of sports and film rights.
"There has been complete indifference from the market - it is taking this in its stride. BSkyB has been under investigation pretty much since it launched," said Paul Richards, a media analyst at Numis Securities.
"It has been able to argue convincingly that it is a tough competitor, but a fair competitor. There is a lot of confidence that BSkyB will find a workable solution."
Three key areas that Ofcom will look at are Sky's distribution of channels to third parties, competition for rights to premium content such as Premier League football, and the broadcaster's strategy of making customers buy a basic package before being able to get premium programming on its sports and movie channels.
Redwan Ahmed, a media analyst at Oriel Securities, said that of these three issues the one where Ofcom could take action, and which could be most damaging to Sky, would be to force the broadcaster to sell its premium film and sports channels separately.
"It is perhaps unlikely, but if Ofcom did make Sky sell premium content on its own that could be most damaging," Ahmed added. "On the other hand Sky is offering to have sports on Freeview which could be seen to circumvent the problem to a certain extent."
He said there could be a relatively straightforward solution to the ongoing standoff between Sky and Virgin Media over what the cable TV company's pays for carrying channels such as Sky One and Sky News.
"An arbitration panel could potentially solve this quite easily," he added. "A proper system in place could rule if there were disagreements over price."
Ahmed admitted that the trickiest area for Ofcom was looking into rights deals and premium content such as Premiership football.
"Content is a hard one, BSkyB don't really set the price but of course it rises if they bid," says Ahmed.
"The Premiership [rights] make Sky, and how on earth do you set a price for football, what would happen to the players and salaries for example? It is a difficult one that I think will die a death, it is a free market."
Numis' Richards described the market's view of the Ofcom consultation as a "bit of a shrug of the shoulders".
"Sky has built an immensely strong business - remember that in the past it went into loss and in 1999 had the same number of subscribers as cable - it wasn't given its position," he said.
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