BT Ponder TV Funding for UK Netflix Rival Britbox with BBC and ITV

Telecoms and broadband ISP BT is reportedly involved in talks that could see them provide millions of extra funding to support the UK launch of a new internet video streaming service, Britbox, which is backed by the BBC and ITV (broadcasters); this is currently only available to consumers in the USA and Canada.

The service carries popular British TV shows from both of the broadcasters and under the current plans it will also be made commercially available across the United Kingdom during the second half of 2019. Subscribers to the service would be expected to pay around £5 per month for access, which is already somewhat controversial given that many of the programmes on offer have technically been supported by TV licence fee payments (mind you the same argument could be used against commercial DVD/Blu-Ray releases of popular shows but these still exist).

The Britbox service essentially offers a historical archive of TV shows, which makes it different from the short-term nature of the BBC’s iPlayer and ITV’s Hub catch-up solutions that only make recent content available for a limited period of time. In this scenario BritBox only gains access to the TV content once it’s stopped being shown on the aforementioned platforms.

The service is seen as somewhat of a counter-move to the likes of Netflix and Amazon (Prime Video). Indeed it’s widely expected that the BBC and ITV will stop licensing their content to those platforms once Britbox goes live in the UK, although it’s unclear how many people will want to pay out yet another monthly fee for yet another paid streaming service, particularly since many will have already viewed the content over this side of the pond.

Nevertheless the Sunday Telegraph alleges that BT is proposing to invest in Britbox, which could in turn help them to become a “super aggregator” of third-party TV streaming services via their YouView (IPTV) and broadband powered set-top box. YouView originally also started off as a project setup by the big TV broadcasters, although today that platform is mostly used by ISPs (e.g. BT, TalkTalk, JT etc.) to underpin their own pay TV products.

However a deal is by no means certain as there are understood to be differences over the valuation of the venture. On top of that the BBC and ITV have yet to agree their own terms for Britbox’s UK launch, which has reportedly been complicated by the question of rights ownership and the BBC’s plans to expand their iPlayer streaming service (longer catch-up content availability etc.). Suffice to say that nothing is certain.