18th Nov 2016 10:18
LONDON (Alliance News) - The heads of BT Group PLC and Sky PLC used a conference in Barcelona on Thursday to pay down the potential for a bidding war for European football rights soon to come up for auction, the Financial Times reported.
Rights to the Champions League are due to come up in coming months and expectations have been high that pay-TV broadcaster Sky PLC may fight hard to win back the rights to the tournament in the UK, having lost those rights to telecoms giant BT Group PLC in 2013, when BT made a big push into television.
At the Morgan Stanley Tech, Media & Telecom Conference in Barcelona, however, Sky Chief Executive Jeremy Darroch said companies were having to make "harder choices" on which sports rights to bid for, in the wake of the huge rise in the cost of television rights for European football in recent years, the FT reported.
"We will seek to win but we're also happy to let things go," Darroch said, according to the newspaper.
BT CEO Gavin Patterson echoed Darroch's comments, saying while buying European football has worked well for BT, the company knows "what is it worth to us and we will go no further than that", the FT reported.
https://www.ft.com/content/d4fa6a30-ace2-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902122
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
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