BT Sport Agree £400m a Year for UEFA Champions and Europa League

UK ISP BT has spent big on football content again for their BTSport TV service and have signed a new deal worth around £400m per year (roughly the same as they paid last time), which gives them the rights to all 420 games of the UEFA Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League until 2024.

The new deal represents an increase of 77 games from the previous deal, and includes highlights and in-match clips, and commences in 2021. BT sees all of this as necessary in order to compete in the aggressive market for quad-play TV bundles and to weaken Sky’s dominance over premium sport TV content.

On the flip side this deal will no doubt add further fuel to the fire of those who complain that the rapidly rising cost of premium TV football content is causing consumer harm, such as by making it more expensive for customers to access such content.

However BT’s new deal appears to be broadly flat on cost vs their previous rights agreement, which suggests that consumer prices may not have to rise by quite as much in the future (this remains to be seen). Likewise those who feel as if BT is spending too much on TV sport, and not enough on upgrading the national broadband infrastructure, will continue to complain even though Openreach has a huge FTTP rollout project (here).

Marc Allera, CEO of BT’s Consumer Division, said:

“We’re delighted to remain the home of UEFA Champions League in the UK. BT Sport leads the way when it comes to UEFA Champions League coverage, and we’re very excited to continue to bring our world class coverage to one of the most exciting football competitions in the world – whether that’s broadcasting 12 games simultaneously or delivering industry leading images in 4K UHD.

With increasingly more ways to watch our content, with more games on show than ever before, and alongside our excellent line up of other competitions and sports, BT Sport is going from strength to strength.”

BT said they will pay £400m each year for the rights (at the last deal it was £394m), and “remains in a strong position to monetise this investment through subscriptions, wholesale access, commercial, and advertising revenues.”