By Mark Ledsom
November 20 – The head of BT TV insisted on Tuesday that the company´s audacious £897 million purchase of the UEFA Champions League broadcast rights earlier this month had been “worth every penny”, and also suggested that BT was ready to mount a similarly aggressive bid during the next round of bidding for the English Premier League TV rights.
Speaking at the UnitedCity Global Sports Summit in Manchester, Marc Watson acknowledged the scepticism with which some analysts viewed BT´s evaluation of the exclusive three-year Champions League deal. “Some have questioned how much we´ve paid, but the truth is we only pay what we think the rights are genuinely worth to us … in terms of our products set,” the BT Chief Executive said.
“The losers in these bids will always say that the winners have overpaid, and I guess we will also say that at some point in the future, but we have got some of the best matches on the planet and they are worth every penny. As an integrated provider of telecoms services, we can unlock a lot of value in the market, so it´s good news for our customers and our investors.”
Making no secret of the fact that BT´s recent move into sports broadcasting has been driven primarily by the desire to boost its broadband internet business, Watson also sought to downplay talk of a battle for supremacy in the UK sports television market between his company and Sky Sports.
“The critics have said it´s a straight battle for viewing figures between us and Sky, but it´s not about picking a fight with Sky, or launching a conquest to take over the pay TV market. It´s about us driving top and bottom line growth in our consumer market. We´re now a permanent part of the sports broadcasting landscape in the UK, and BT Sport is helping BT to sell more broadband, improve the perception of our business and, in turn, improve our broadcast offering.”
While BT is still working on the details of how exactly it will package its Champions League and Europa League matches, Watson said that fans wishing to follow European football from 2015 would be able to do so more easily and cheaply than under the current deal, shared between Sky Sports and terrestrial broadcaster ITV.
“It currently costs over £40 a month if you want to follow all of the Champions League matches today, and we promise we´ll be lower than that,” he said. “There´s no price point yet but it will be a pretty keen price point, and we´ll also be showing free every British team involved in the competition at least once – and probably more than once.”
BT´s unexpected success in landing the Champions League rights has also heightened expectations of a bidding frenzy when the Premier League launches its own bidding process for the 2016-19 seasons. While refusing to be drawn on details, Watson suggested that BT had enough in reserve to mount another strong bid for the Premiership´s live rights, which are currently shared between BT and Sky.
“I don´t really want to comment on the next Premier League auction, because we´re trying to calm it down for a bit,” Watson said. “It´s also hard to make predictions at this stage, because it´s a direct function of the competitive process that the Premier League manages to generate. But if this (Champions League acquisition) is working for us to drive our business forward, then we will be in a position to invest again. Broadband is generating a lot of revenue for us, so we´ve been able to afford some pretty eye-watering sums – because we believe it delivers.”
Taking part in a panel discussion earlier in the day, Sky Sports´ Head of Production Steve Smith acknowledged that Sky had been “disappointed to lose out” on the latest Champions League rights but insisted that the broadcaster would “move on.”
“We just keep pushing ahead and innovating, and driving ourselves on even between our different sports teams, that´s what Sky Sports was built on,” Smith said.
Philip Bernie, Head of BBC TV Sport, meanwhile argued that BT´s Champions League success had thrown the UK sports market into “some confusion.”
“It will be interesting to see where it will go now with the rights, and there is now a lot of speculation about the next Premier League rights. It´s hard to know how much of a game changer it will be, because Sky also lost out on the FA Cup deal a few years back to Setanta and ITV but they´ve shown that they are an extremely powerful operation that can´t be underestimated, even if this shows the strength of BT as a competitor. I think it´s a shame that the Champions League will be coming off free to air, even if a bit of free to air was eked out in the deal, but it was a major play and shows that BT are serious and that there will be a big head-to-head between the two.”
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