BT and Discovery in talks on merging sport channels
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As part of the arrangement, BT customers will still be able to watch Sky’s sports output. Talks with Discovery should be wrapped before the end of March, BT hopes, so the 50-50 joint venture can start this year. The combined BT Sport and Eurosport deal would keep BT’s existing sports rights such as the Premier League, the UEFA Champions League, England cricket and UFC.
BT believes that combining its channels with Discovery’s will provide the investment needed to keep it competitive against Sky and new players like DAZN, the sports streaming service.
Marc Allera, BT Consumer chief executive, said: “The proposed joint venture with Discovery would create an exciting new sports broadcasting entity for the UK and would act as a perfect home for our BT Sport business.
“With a shared ambition for growth, as well as the combination of our world class sports assets along with Discovery’s premium sports and entertainment content, our customers will benefit from even more content in more places.”
Having invested heavily over the last decade to enter into the sports pay-TV market, BT, under chief executive Philip Jansen, has shifted its strategic focus to building a super-fast full fibre to the premises (FTTP) broadband network across the country.
At its third quarter trading update, Jansen said BT had made it available to 662,000 premises during the nine months to the end of December, taking the total so far to 6.5 million. It now has more than 1.5 million FTTP customers, up 244,000.
BT added that its 5G rollout “was on track” and now covers more than 40 percent of the UK population.
However, its investment in FTTP and 5G rollout resulted in spending rising 24 percent to £3.8billion, which in turn sent its pre-tax profits down three percent to £1.5billion. Despite its profits dip, Jansen said: “BT had a good quarter with encouraging market share performance.”
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