The season has yet to kick off, but this is a big week for the Barclays Premier League.
On August 1, the seed sown in spectacular fashion just over a year ago by BT, a traditional telephone company, is scheduled to bear its first fruit with the launch of its BT Sport channels.
Two days later, BT Sport will begin its live football coverage with Liverpool and England captain Steven Gerrard’s testimonial match against Olympiacos of Greece.
And at 12.45pm UK time on August 17, Gerrard is likely once again to be the centre of attention, as BT Sport screens its first live Premier League game, and the first action of the 2013-14 season, in the shape of Liverpool versus Stoke City.
The league and everyone who makes their living from it should wish the new venture well.
In the short term, new entrant BT’s willingness to splash £246 million a year for 38 games a season, including several top picks, guaranteeing it the marquee names that pull in ‘neutrals’ and occasional football-watchers, was a major factor in generating a near 70% increase in the value of the league’s live domestic rights compared with the previous deal.
This will no doubt feed quickly through into pay packets and transfer fees.
Just as importantly, there are grounds for thinking that BT may turn out to be the most enduring competitor yet for Sky in the Premier League’s home market.
This may bode well for future auctions in the market which, for all the recent escalation in the value of overseas Premier League rights, is still probably worth more than all others added together.
As Dan Jones, partner in professional service firm Deloitte’s sports business group, puts it: “The scale and pace of the [BT Sport] channel’s success may have a huge impact on football’s longer-term financial fortunes”.
There is no doubt that BT is a big, deep-pocketed rival for Sky.
Its revenue for the year to March 31, 2013 reached £18.25 billion, versus £7.24 billion for Sky in its year to June 30, 2013.
In its latest quarter, it included “around £40 million” of pre-launch costs for BT Sport, while indicating that it will start to recognise programme content costs in the present quarter.
Yet its size is not really why it is being perceived as potentially a long-term rival to Sky; this has more to do with the reasons for which it is thought to have entered the market with such gusto.
In short, the acquisition of highly compelling sports content, such as live rights to some of the biggest Premier League clashes, is thought to be a means to an end – the end being to stop people leaving their broadband service.
As Sean McGuire, managing director of Oliver & Ohlbaum Associates, a sports rights specialist who advised BT on its acquisition of Premier League rights, told me: “Broadband (and the bundle) is the key to the value.
“Sky have been adding broadband customers at an increasing rate – and many of those have come from BT.
“Stopping that churn is really important to BT.”
Seen in that light, BT’s acknowledgement last week that, “as expected”, most of the more than 500,000 households who have already ordered BT Sport are existing customers who have re-contracted their broadband service, as opposed to new customers, is not in itself any cause for concern.
It expects the proportion of new customers to increase after August 1.
As for how to gauge whether this high-profile push into live football broadcasting is working for BT, one figure to keep an eye on, in addition to the company’s bottom-line, might be its share of the UK fixed broadband market.
Figures on regulator Ofcom’s website for the end of 2012 give BT a 30% market share, compared with 20% for Virgin Media, 19% Sky and 17% for TalkTalk.
You would have needed a particularly clear crystal ball to have predicted in 1992 when the Premier League was founded that Sky’s keenest competitor in the market for broadcasting live action might turn out ultimately to be a traditional telephone company.
But that may be the direction in which we are headed.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938