BT Sport Grabs Former Sky Broadband UK Boss Delia Bushell to be its MD

The battle for broadband and TV dominance between BSkyB and BT took another twist today after it was revealed that the latter had nabbed the former Director of Sky Broadband and voice services, Delia Bushell, to take the new role of Managing Director at its TV and BTSport division.

Delia Bushell is considered by many to be a 14 year veteran of Sky’s, starting out in 1999 as a member of Sky Ventures before later becoming the groups Head of Business Development and then the Managing Director for BSkyB in Ireland. After that she took responsibility for turning Sky’s TV ambitions into a multi-platform success by becoming the boss of its then fledgling broadband and voice division between 2006 to 2011.

Bushell, following a long stint at BSkyB, took up the role of Sky Italia’s Chief Strategy and Commercial Initiatives Officer in 2012 and only last June 2013 was appointed to be the group’s Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). Suffice to say that you don’t generally leave such a recent appointment unless something goes horribly wrong or you get poached by a significantly more attractive offer.

Her new role as MD of BTSport and TV is effectively acting as a replacement for the CEO position that was previously held by Marc Watson, until his shock departure at the end of last month (here). Bushell will now report directly to the CEO of BT’s Consumer division, John Petter.

John Petter, CEO of BT Consumer, said:

“[Delia Bushell] has an excellent track record of delivery and is an experienced top class executive. She helped Sky build a formidable triple-play base and I am sure she will help us to build on our strong success with BT TV and Sport.”

Bushell certainly has a challenging time ahead and towards the end of this year she will need to fight with her former employer over the next batch of Premier League TV rights. Similarly BTSport, which is offered free to BT’s broadband subscribers, has managed to attract 4 million users but the operators set-top-box focused BT TV (IPTV) division has seen only moderate growth and currently totals 950,000 customers (BT’s ex-CEO Ian Livingston once predicted that it would reach around 2-3m by 2010).

Meanwhile BT also has to keep its eye on TalkTalk, which only relatively recently entered the TV game (less than two years ago) and has already grown to 732,000 customers. TalkTalk’s similarly YouView (IPTV) based broadband TV service is growing at a much faster rate, although BT has hinted that it’s sibling PlusNet could soon launch a budget TV solution to compete (here and here).