Broadband, mobile and broadcasting giant BT has announced that their Sport TV streaming business has secured the rights to the majority of UEFA’s Champions League games, plus all the Europa League and the Europa Conference League exclusively live, for a further 3 seasons. But Amazon’s Prime Video service has also taken a slice.
Previously, BT held the exclusive rights to all the matches, but this year it’s understood that they paid £305 million per year to show 533 of the total 550 games available. Amazon is understood to have paid an overall total of £1.5bn to get in on this action, which will see them broadcast one game per match day for the 2024-27 seasons.
UEFA reportedly opted to scrap exclusivity for rights from 2024/25, which is due to the increased number of matches in the Champions League – this reflects an increase in the tournament’s group stage from 32 to 36 teams. But Amazon will now get the first pick of matches on a Tuesday night, through to the semi-finals.
The timing of BT’s 6 cash payments covering the rights costs of c. £305m per annum, less the deposit, by the proposed JV will be:
· August 2024 c.£92m
· February 2025 c.£153m
· August] 2025 c.£153m
· February 2026 c.£153m
· August 2026 c.£153m
· February 2027 c.£153m
The news comes shortly after BT’s decision to merge its TV Sport business with Discovery (Warner Bros) as part of a 50:50 joint venture with Eurosport UK – due to complete by the end of 2022 (here).
Marc Allera, CEO of BT’s Consumer Division, said:
“BT Sport continues to be the home of the UEFA Club Competitions until 2027 and we are extremely proud to have the privilege of twelve years of broadcasting one of the most exciting competitions in the world. It is fantastic news for our viewers that from 2024 we will be able to show more games than ever before live and exclusive on BT Sport.”
Guy-Laurent Epstein, UEFA Marketing Director, said: “We are delighted to be extending our partnership with BT until 2027. BT has been a long-standing UEFA club competition partner since 2015, where it has applied industry leading broadcast expertise to European club football. Throughout 2024-27 BT will broadcast more live matches than ever before, which will be supplemented by its exceptional array of original programming.”
The news will no doubt do little to dampen complaints from some quarters, not least over the ever-increasing price of being able to access and view all of this content when it’s being split between several different providers. But so long as enough consumers are willing to pay for it, then little will change.
Absolute P take given how much it now costs to watch sport, So many different subscriptions it should just be on ITV like it used to be.. £46 a month for Sky and BT Sport alone!
Just cancelled our BT Sports and Sky Sports, this week…sad times for us peasants…now where’s me horse parked?
Doesn’t matter really. All will be available in 1080/4K in one of the IPTV services for 6 Euros/month 😉
Overpaid fairies running around a pitch and people pay vast sums for them to keep doing it. It’s the consumer that’s to blame, not BT. If you keep paying it, they will keep taking it.
I’d rather watch paint dry.
LOL, that made me laugh, I know I should not have, but there you go.
I don’t like football, in fact I would go as far as saying I hate it. Mainly because the country seems to come to a stop when ever it is on.
@Ad47uk, I hate grumpy supermarket works.
BT should really focus on actual telecom services. Almost 2/3 of this backwards country still doesn’t have fibre broadband.
You obviously aren’t aware of the massive push for FTTP that BT are financing to reach 25 million properties (80% of the UK) by December 2026
He’s quite aware of this, Peach.
gnewtown response to type as ever !!!!
Maybe they can spend their money as they wish.
Fine with that as long as we don’t need to pay for it. What’s annoying is if you don’t want football, but *do* want, say, Eurosports, you either have to splash out for football anyway via the Big Sports or VIP package, or order the service separately. Doing the former is likely to be a non-starter given price, even for a month or two, while the latter is far less convenient for non-technical family members.
Incidentally, performance of the TV guide is really bad here, it’s hard to even get a preview of what BD *does* have. I appreciate it’s a busy time of day, but still – maybe it’s getting swarmed by bots? https://www.bt.com/sport/watch/whats-on
More concerning is the fact you can only watch European football via USA companies.
@Silky77 is BT a USA company?
The Sports Division will be very soon Warner Media Discovery is going to merge with BT Sports and as part of the deal they can buy out the remaining stake BT will have by time these rights happen.
It is stupid of the cost to watch these things now, even if I liked football, I would not pay to watch it.
I like motor racing and while I would pay a certain amount to watch it F1, I would not pay the amount sky want. Thankfully, there are other ways to watch it.
In the UK you have to pay an absolute fortune to both Sky and BT (I quit Sky 10 years ago when they were demanding £65 per month off me). And for this you are very lucky if you get one game per month for your team. Usually its one game per two months – unless you support Liverpool or Man City of course then you might get two games per month. There are no 3pm Saturday games ever shown on TV. Yet every other country on earth shows all your teams games, including 3pm Saturday games on only one subscription for a price per year less than you pay Sky per month.
Exactly. Get all my football via Paramount Plus, Dazn & Peacock. £15 a month & 3 pm Saturday kickoffs. Had Sky for twenty years, but £65 a month was a joke. Plus F1 & MotoGP via Dazn Spain
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