11th Nov 2013 08:29
LONDON (Alliance News) - BT Group PLC's rivalry with British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC has moved a notch higher after BT won exclusive rights to show all the Champions League and Europe Cup football matches in the UK for three years from the 2015/16 season.
The win will be a blow for Sky and ITV PLC which have both shared rights in recent seasons.Sky built its subscriber base of more than 10 million on the back of showing live football games. BT launched its sports channel in the summer after winning rights to show some English Premier League matches, although Sky still has the rights to a bigger proportion of those games.
In a statement, BT said has agreed to pay around GBP299 million a season for the rights, an amount it said it can incur without changing its current financial outlook. It will pay a total of EUR1.08 billion for all three seasons. It still expects earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, excluding one-off items to be GBP6.0 billion to GBP6.1 billion in 2013/14, GBP6.2 billion to GBP6.3 billion in 2014/15 and to grow further in 2015/16.
Sky hit back, saying it hadn't been prepared to pay the amount BT paid.
BT pledged to show some games for free on BT Sport, including the finals of both competitions. It will be first time since the Champions League rights were first handed out that no games will be available of free-to-air terrestrial channels.
By Steve McGrath; [email protected]; @SteveMcGrath1
Related Shares:
BT