In this competitive pay-TV sports market, it’s been well documented that Sky Sports have been the market leader in the fiercely competitive market for over two decades. Beating off numerous attempts by now defunct Irish broadcaster, Setanta and US owned ESPN to topple Sky off the top of the mountain. Now the new challenger who hope to have Sky quaking in its boots is BT – with its new BT Sport channels having made quite the impact when BT bid £738m for 38 live Premier League football matches with 1st pick matches airing on the 12.30pm slot. But will BT’s sports channels live up to the hype or an overhyped venture?
Since the very nature of the deal, BT has bid big in its quest for pay-TV dominance. Deals such as the £152m for 69 Premiership Rugby games as well as buying out the ESPN channels, were bought for a few million poundswere the other big signings in the launch of the BT Sport channels that launches on August 3rd. Other than spending over £1 billion pounds, BT have spent building up their portfolio. They have promised customers who are with BT Broadband that they will have the BT Sport channels free of charge. If you happen to be not with BT, then you the consumer have to pay £12 a month with an extra £3 additional charge for the HD channels. However, BT’s advertising campaign has been not without controversy.
Sky has been unwilling to broadcast the BT Sport advertisements on their Sky Sports channels, which has angered BT a great deal. These series of insults have led to Ofcom being involved in which Sky won convincingly to have BT Sport advertisements not advertised on the Sky Sports channels.
This challenge was the first of many with Sky using their Project Purple think tank where Sky are finding ways of beating off the staunch challenge of BT. What has happened is Sky aregiving subscribers of the sports pack free 12m broadband to fend off the challenge of BT Sport. Not only that, but Sky are considering airing their Football League matches for free in front of a live audience which is one of BT Sport’s proposals for their coverage.
So does BT Sport have a chance of knocking Sky off the top of the mountain? We’ll have to find out when the battle commences.
By Umar Hassan
