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The Champions League is coming to BT Sport. The relative newcomer announced it snaffled the rights in a deal thought to be worth £900 million.
The deal marks the end of two decades of the Champions League being shown live on terrestrial TV.
The three-year deal will start from 2015. Sky and ITV currently share the rights to the league. The two broadcasters inked a deal back in 2011 that was worth half what BT is thought to have paid.
As part of the deal, BT has promised to show some of the matches for free, including the final.
BT Sport is a relative newcomer to the world of sports broadcasting. The channel launched at the beginning of August this year, and BT has been marketing it aggressively. In a bid to topple Sky’s dominance, BT splashed out £738 million on the rights to show 38 live Premier League matches this season. That’s small beer compared to Sky though, who spent a whopping £2.3 billion on 116 matches.
Snaffling the rights to the Champions League is a real feather in BT Sport’s cap.
BT claims more than 2 million people have signed up to its sports channel. It reported pre-tax profits of £948 million. Not bad for six months.
But it’s not all been champagne and roses. When the service kicked off, the BT Sport mobile app had a few gremlins in the system. The coverage cut out completely for some, while for others it only worked over Wi-Fi, instead of the 3G or 4G networks as advertised. The issue was soon resolved, and customers were able to catch the second half of the Liverpool v Stoke City game.
Do you have BT Sport? What do you think of it? And is it good BT’s got the rights to the Champions League over Sky? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.
