BT Sport has recruited Gary Lineker and Steven Gerrard to its on-screen team and announced it would start charging for top-flight European football from August.
Set up to “give sport back to the people”, BT Sport will charge customers £5 per month for full coverage of Champions League and Europa League matches unless they sign up for pay-TV package.
Premier League football, which BT shares live rights to with Sky, will remain free to BT broadband customers for one more year. “We set out to change televised sport in this country by giving it away for free, giving sport back to the people and we feel we’ve done that,” said anchor Jake Humphrey. “Our third season is the one where we feel BT sport is going to come of age.”
In a surprise swoop in 2013, BT acquired 350 Uefa games in a record-breaking £897m three-year deal, becoming the first broadcaster to hold all live rights to the Champions and Europa leagues. These had previously been shared by Sky and ITV, and some fans reacted with dismay at the loss of terrestrial TV coverage for European club football’s most prestigious contests.
At a launch in BT’s Stratford studios in the former Olympic park, Lineker was unveiled as a presenter on the soon-to-launch BT Sport Europe channel. The former England captain and long-serving BBC football presenter has joined the BT team after signing a non-exclusive contract with the BBC which allows him to accept work for other broadcasters. Former Liverpool and England skipper Gerrard and Rio Ferdinand, who announced his retirement last month, are also joining BT Sport.
A total of 26 matches per season from the Europa and Champions League contests will be shown free-to-air on a second new channel, BT Sport Showcase, available on the Freeview platform. This falls well short of the 42 matches per season shown on ITV, when Champions League was accorded a weekly slot on terrestrial television.
BT will show 12 Champions League matches and 14 Europa League clashes on Freeview, including the finals of both contests, along with one match per round and at least one free broadcast for every English team playing.
When the sports channels were launched two seasons ago, they were offered free to those who took BT broadband. To receive all BT Sport for free from this summer, the typical subscriber will have to pay £780 a year for a package that includes a digital video recorder, set-top box, pay TV package, discounted phone calls, line rental and superfast broadband. The cost is also rising for pubs and clubs.
John Petter, chief executive of BT’s consumer business, defended BT’s swoop on European football and its decision to begin charging, saying that compared with the Sky model, BT was still much more affordable.
“For too many years, too many people in this country have been asked to pay too much to view televised sport and we knew that there were growing numbers of people who either wouldn’t or who simply could not afford the sums that were being asked for,” he said. “We are changing that. First we are bringing premium sport to a whole new much bigger audience.”
BT Sport reaches 5.2m households, through its own set-top box, Virgin Media’s cable service, Sky’s satellite dishes and the BT Sport app. BT claims more younger people, more people from less well-off households, and more viewers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland watch its channels than those of other sports broadcasters.
BT’s third new channel will be the first in Europe to broadcast in ultra-high definition, which promises four times the quality of existing HD. BT Sport Ultra HD will feature Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup and premiership rugby matches. It will be available only on a new ultra high definition set-top box.
BT hoped its sports channels would stop customers defecting to Sky and other providers and help grow revenues and profits. Its consumer division has grown revenue and profits for five consecutive quarters; for seven quarters, BT has added more broadband customers than any other provider in the country.
“When we launched BT Sport, some very eminent critics … said that we had completely lost it and that this could never work,” Petter said. “And now I just hope that those people see it differently.”
