BT Sport have agreed to pay a staggering sum of nearly £1 billion for the rights to show Champions League football from 2015. That’s a spicy meatball.
Very much the new kids on the block when it comes to sports broadcasting, BT Sport haven’t quite threatened Sky’s hegemony in terms of Premier League coverage so far, but this latest revelation seems to indicate that they mean business and are in it for the long-haul.
Following speculation in this morning's papers, BT are understood to have exclusive UK rights to the coverage of the world’s biggest club football tournament (and, eh, the Europa League as well) from 2015 in a deal worth nearly £1 billion over three years - £299 million a season - coming off the back of the £738 million they played for the rights to Premier League coverage for three years starting from this season. Frightening figures indeed.
If the deal goes ahead, it could spell huge trouble for the likes of Sky and ITV and will likely take Champions League coverage off terrestrial and free-to-air TV for the first time in the history of the competition.
As BT Sport have won the UK rights to Champions League and Europa League coverage, it is unclear how this will affect RTE and TV3 on this side of the water, but the deal will create shockwaves throughout the broadcast industry in the UK, not least at Sky, who were almost casually dismissive of BT’s threat at the start of this season.
One thing’s for sure, if BT are paying that amount of money, they’ll want to avoid embarrassing incidents like this from their analysts…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AEA4kgq8W4
