UPDATE EE Offers 6 Months FREE BT Sport TV to UK 4G Mobile Customers

New and existing customers of EE’s pay monthly and SIM-only mobile plans can now benefit from 6 months of free access to the BTSport TV app (£5 a month thereafter), which is no doubt a benefit that has been extracted from the recent £12.5bn merger between the two. Just watch your data usage.

Apparently the new feature will be made available to related consumer and small business customers from 27th July 2016, although not all pay monthly handset, tablet and SIM-only plans will be able to benefit. The offer excludes 4GEE Wi-Fi / Mobile Broadband and Large Business customers.

We should also point out that this appears to be the full BTSport TV content and NOT the ‘Lite’ package, including channels BTSport 1, BTSport 2, BTSport Europe and ESPN. Customers of BT’s own broadband and mobile plans also receive BTSport content for free, albeit the ‘Lite’ package rather than the ‘Pack’ above.

Marc Allera, CEO of EE, said:

“Our customers have been telling us for a long time that they are watching more and more sport on the go, and this summer’s European Championship football tournament has driven traffic peaks that we’ve never seen before.

Now, as part of BT Group, we are able to offer customers the chance to watch the very best in live domestic and European sport when out and about. With our ambition to reach 95% of the geography of the UK by 2020, EE customers will be able to watch Premier League football while on Hackney Marshes, or the America’s Cup in the middle of Lake Windermere.”

All this extra data usage could put a strain on EE’s 4G network, although they’ve managed to cope with surges from recent sporting events and have also now integrated BT’s content delivery platform into their network to help manage such issues.

However EE doesn’t clarify whether usage of the BTSport app will count towards a customer’s usage allowance, although we have asked and will report back once they reply.

PS – Expect one of those big TV advertising campaigns with actor Kevin Bacon, as well as BT Sport pundits Rio Ferdinand, José Mourinho and Harry Redknapp, to start annoying you again in the very near future.

UPDATE 10:52am

Sadly EE has confirmed that streaming on BTSport “will count” towards a customers’ 4G data usage allowance, although you can avoid this by trying to use the app over WiFi instead whenever possible. In saying that, with the BT Sport app, customers don’t have to live-stream entire games as the app offers a number of features including replays, text commentary should users wish to conserve their data allowance.