BT pay silly money for Champions League

Reports tonight BT are to strip FTA viewers of Champions League Football after over 20 years by bidding a ridiculous £900m for exclusive rights, compared to the £160m ITV currently pay and £240m paid by Sky.

They've snapped up the Europa League too - that probably accounts for about £3.50 of the £900m.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/champions-league/10436566/BT-Sport-to-show-Champions-League-and-Europa-League-football-from-2015.html

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/media/article3917638.ece

The effect on ITV/FTA side of this is a shame if true.

The telegraph article seems to suggest that some of the games may be shown on Freeview.

Perhaps BT Sport will go to the extent of creating 'shop window' channel. Could feature a sports news service?

BT have now shut their Freeview channel though and apparently can't just unencrypt their subscription channels as they're encoded differently.

BT haven't bought these rights to give them away for free - no point using it to drive subscriptions then airing key games free. Indeed wouldn't be surprised if this is used as the sweetner for BT customers if as speculated the sports channels are not free with BT Broadband by this time next year. The irony being of course it's the non-BT Sport customers who are footing the bill.


An interesting side note will be highlights. Since UEFA only allowed to have highlights on the day of their live matches they've become a bit of an after thought really, so whether a highlights package will become available FTA remains to be seen. Would be nice to see highlights restored to both nights, but I can see it just being on Wednesdays rounding up both nights.

I think the £3 HD charge will foot at least some of the increased costs next year.

Go on then, I'll bite. How'd you work that out?

If we needed any more confirmation on the merit of this story, it's now being reported by the BBC that BT are on the verge of sealing an exclusive contract.

Stunning, simply stunning. This is beyond Christmas for BT Sport. Suggestions rumbling that the announcement is due to be made on air on BTSP this morning.

Being made at 10am by the sounds of it.

Still in shock about the news. A game changing move - trying to get my head around the Champions League Final exclusively live on BT Sport 1.

I suspect that is one of the games they will / they'll have to offer FTA.

BTS1 at 10am it is.