BT Sport

[Fredo]

Surely Tee, more competition will help get the prices down, not up?

[Reece]

Surely Tee, more competition will help get the prices down, not up?

That's what the EU or whoever it was stated as the reason for now allowing Sky to have all the games - it wasn't fair on the consumer etc.

Now we have to pay multiple subscriptions to different companies to see all the games, and end up paying more.

Brilliant.

[Tee]

All credit to LFC for keeping LFCTV free to watch. Fantastic move IMO. Lots of non LFC fans do flick overr and watch and it gives us great exposure.

[Chazza]

BT is expected to earmark billions of pounds over the next decade to spend on sports rights in a sustained attempt to challenge Sky, as the new broadcaster gears up to launch two sports channels in July.

The telecom company, which laid down a marker when it spent £738m on 38 live Premier League matches per season last year, will consider launching bids for a host of other major football properties including the FA Cup, Champions League and England internationals as they become available.

It will also target other sports, having already signed a £152m club rugby deal that has caused major ructions within the game. But executives are also acutely aware that the arrival of BT in the market has fuelled rights inflation and are determined not to overpay.

With Sky also cutting back on some rights to pay for its increased investment of £2.3bn in Premier League football, the new competitive landscape will not be good news for all sports.

This week BT will announce that it has signed a four-year deal with the Women's Tennis Association to screen 800 hours of live tennis a year – the first in a new spate of deals to fill its schedules. It hopes to capitalise on the increased appeal of the British players Heather Watson and Laura Robson on the back of results that have catapulted them into the world's top 50.

Simon Green, the head of BT Sport, said the WTA deal would be the first of several to try to give more exposure to women's sport. The London Olympics was seen as something of a watershed in raising the profile of female athletes.

"This is our first women's sport for the channels and we see a genuine opportunity to really develop the exposure for women's sport with our new channels. We are focusing on several more women's sports and we hope to be able to announce more rights soon," said Green.

In addition to its domestic rugby rights, BT is awaiting the outcome of a dispute between European Rugby Cup and Premiership Rugby over the future shape of European competition. It has also signed deals to show Italian, Brazilian, French and US football and is convinced all can be packaged and marketed more attractively than they are at present.

ESPN, which is considering its options in the UK after the Premier League auction left it without any live top-flight football, could do a deal with BT to allow it to buy out the final year of its FA Cup contract if it decides to close its UK channel in the summer. More FA Cup rights and the live rights to England games home and away, currently held by ITV, will become available at the end of next season. Under a new centralised system Uefa will sell the rights to European Championships and World Cup qualifiers on behalf of the FA.

ITV and BSkyB have the rights to live Champions League football tied up until the end of the 2014–15 season but BT Sport is also likely to bid for those when they become available.

Although Sky has responded to the emergence of a genuine threat to its dominance of sports broadcasting by securing the rights to sports such as cricket until the end of the decade, there is a belief at BT that enough opportunities remain to make a success of its new high-profile launch.

While the near-term focus is on launching two new sports channels from scratch in new studios based on the Olympic Park, executives are expected to then begin mapping out a strategy for the next round of Premier League rights auctions and beyond.

The new sports channels will be made available to Sky viewers but will also be aggressively marketed to existing BT customers, with deals for those who also subscribe to its telephone, broadband and television services. Having recently signed a 10-year lease on the studios in the former International Broadcasting Centre at the Olympic Park and a long-term contract with Sunset+Vine to produce coverage of its 38 top-flight football matches and 69 live Aviva Premiership rugby games per season, BT has reiterated its long-term commitment to the project.

BT's business produces £2.2bn of free cash flow per a year and, in addition to investing in the nationwide rollout of its BT Infinity high speed broadband network and YouView TV service, a significant portion of that will be invested in the BT Sport offering.

Marc Watson, the BT Vision chief executive, told the Guardian that the launch of BT Sport was part of a "broader strategy" to bring in revenue from its "triple play" proposition. "Ultimately we'll have three very strong brands in the marketplace – BT Sport [the sports channels], BT YouView including BT Vision [the television service) and BT Infinity [superfast broadband]. The strategy is to get behind these products and grow the business," he said.

"We've got a job to do to create BT Sport as a credible brand in the marketplace. That won't happen overnight but, if you've got the top matches, that helps."

The chairman of the production company that will oversee live output for BT Sport, which has signed up Jake Humphrey as its main anchor and will shortly unveil another major signing, said it was determined to differentiate itself from rivals. The Sunset+Vine chairman, Jeff Foulser, told the Guardian it would "look at things a bit differently and be a bit adventurous".

http://m.guardian.co.uk/football/201...ports-coverage

[Alex]

Brilliant more channels to try and take your money, and they wonder why people stream.

[Chazza]

Can't see ESPN staying around in the UK without the football or Rugby.

[Fredo]

Streaming for me

I wonder why you'd waste your money on BT or Sky. You'd save a fortune streaming and now with TV sets coming with apps which allows you to tap in, there certainly is a strong case to ditch them. Or go to the pub.

[Fosterbloke]

I'd rather go to the pub and support a local business.

Sky can go to hell with their **** analysis.

[dom9]

Pub gets really expensive though. You could easily get through 4 pints. That's like £14 per visit. Twice a week. Sky actually works out cheaper.

[Johnny H]

I am on BT Infinity 2 broadband now, fibre optic.
I know I sound like a numpty but what do I need to do to stream live footy?
I've got a laptop that's a bit old and slow, and an iPad.

Cheers!

[dom9]

I am on BT Infinity 2 broadband now, fibre optic.
I know I sound like a numpty but what do I need to do to stream live footy?
I've got a laptop that's a bit old and slow, and an iPad.

Cheers!

Just check the match streaming threads on here on match days.

[Rich]

I am on BT Infinity 2 broadband now, fibre optic.
I know I sound like a numpty but what do I need to do to stream live footy?
I've got a laptop that's a bit old and slow, and an iPad.

Cheers!

Why have fantastic broadband speeds if your computer is crap?

[Imy]

BT to buy ESPN UK and Ireland channels

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21577676

BT has agreed to buy ESPN's UK and Ireland TV channels as it adds to its live sports coverage.

The deal sees BT acquire the ESPN and ESPN America channels, and their live rights to show FA Cup, Scottish Premier League, Uefa Europa League, and German Bundesliga matches.

The company will launch its BT Sport TV package in the summer.

BT had already secured the rights to show live English Premier League games for the first time, from next season.

The BT deal creates a bigger competitor for BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster that has increased its number of UK subscribers to 10 million on the back of sports rights.

BT already offers a broadcasting package through its BT Vision pay-TV offering. The ESPN deal is seen as a way to drive customers for BT Vision, which currently has about 700,000 subscribers.

The UK telecoms firm has been investing heavily in its sports offering, including buying the rights to show live Aviva Premiership rugby union matches and a deal with the WTA to show women's tennis.

It has taken on some big-name sports presenters including Jake Humphrey, who led the BBC's Formula One coverage, and Clare Balding who presented horse racing and Olympics coverage for the BBC.

After last year's auction of Premier League rights, which raised more than £3bn, ESPN was left with no rights to show live matches after the 2012-13 season.

The package went for 70% more than the previous one, with BSkyB agreeing to pay £2.28bn for the rights to 116 games per season from 2013-14 to 2015-16. BT, meanwhile, agreed to pay £736m for the rights to 38 games per season over the three-year period.

BT will base its new sports channels in the Olympic park in east London

The ESPN deal is expected to be completed at the end of July. After that BT said it would continue to operate at least one ESPN-branded channel as part of its new sports package.

ESPN channels will broadcast from BT Sport's new facilities at the Olympic Park in Stratford.

"We are delighted to have reached agreement with ESPN for the acquisition of their UK channels business and that we have been able to add some exciting new sports rights to the ones we already have," said Marc Watson, chief executive of television, BT Retail.

"The FA Cup, Scottish Premier League and Europa League rights will allow us to offer customers of BT Sport even more quality live football, including our first games from the Scottish top flight and our first European competition rights."

The deal will also see BT continue to show the US sports currently shown on ESPN America, which includes college basketball, college football and Nascar racing.

Ross Hair, ESPN's managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said: "We could not be more proud of the TV channels built and nurtured by our talented team over the past four years.

"The value of that hard work is reflected in this deal with BT and the continuation of ESPN on television screens across the UK and Ireland."

The deal does not include ESPN Classic, which will be wound down.

[Imy]

No mention of UFC or Serie A football though.

[dom9]

Am I right in thinking that the sale of premier league tv rights domestically and globally this time has generated more cash than the government got for the 4G auction?