BT has added more premium live sport to its portfolio by signing deals with a number of international football leagues.
The telecoms giant has secured exclusive UK rights to cover a host of world football’s top-flight leagues, including Italy’s Serie A, France’s Ligue 1, Major League Soccer in the United States and Brazil’s Brasileirao.
All four deals will run for multi-year periods starting from the beginning of next season.
Serie A rights include a selection of live matches and highlights packages from each match day as well as the weekly preview show Total Italian Football and weekly review Serie A Show.
French Ligue 1 rights also include live matches, a weekly preview show and highlights packages from each match day.
The Brasileiro rights include 100 live matches per season from Campeonato Paulista (Paulista) and Campeonato Brasileiro de Clubes da Série A (Brasileirão or Brazilian Serie A), weekly highlights shows from both competitions and TV Globo Soccer Magazine show ‘FootBrazil’.
MLS rights include 99 matches per season.
It is not known how much BT paid to secure the, but said they were “much less expensive” than its multi-million pound deals to secure live Premier League and Premiership Rugby rights.
ESPN UK currently holds the live rights to Serie A, Ligue 1 and MLS matches, but the operation now faces an uncertain future after losing the majority of its live football portfolio to BT.
“We are delighted to announce that we will be adding to the Barclays Premier League live games with more top quality live coverage of games from some of the top leagues in the world,” said BT Vision chief executive Marc Watson.
“We believe this extra depth of live matches will help us in our aim to develop an absolutely cracking sports channel, with fantastic live action, across the top football leagues, plus rugby union and other sports to come.
“We’ve hired the best talent behind the camera to bring to viewers the first rate production that they’ve come to expect from a sports channel in the UK.”
In a surprising move earlier this year, BT won the rights to show 38 live Barclays Premier League games per season for three years, including 18 ‘first pick’ games.
The acquisitions give the telecoms giant a host of live football to fill its upcoming sports channel, increasing its attractiveness both to customers and rival networks who BT hopes will pay to carry its new sports offering.
The telecoms company, which operates its own BT Vision TV service and is a shareholder in IPTV platform YouView, is now assembling a team to execute its ambitious new sports strategy.
BBC sports presenter Jake Humphrey was its first major on-screen signing in September. He will be the face of the new channel’s Barclays Premier League coverage starting next season.
BT have also appointed Simon Green, the former CEO of Frank Warren’s BoxNation channel, to head up the launch of its new sports channel, as well as Emmy-award winning sports producer Grant Best and Jamie Hindhaugh, who was head of production for the BBC’s coverage of the London Olympics.
The company is in talks with a number of production firms, including ITV Studios, IMG Media and Tinopolis, over who will produce its live sports coverage from next season.
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