BT has confirmed that millions of its broadband customers will be able to continue watching BT Sport for free during the 2014-15 season.
For a second successive season, new and re-contracting customers of BT Broadband will receive BT Sport as part of their broadband package, meaning sports fans can carry on watching the channel’s varied offering of live sport free of charge.
BT Sport burst onto the televised sports scene 12 months ago by announcing that it would offer its first season of live sport free of charge to its broadband customers, a move by the telecoms giant that saw it lay down a direct challenge to its fierce rival BSkyB.
Launched in August 2013, during BT Sport’s first nine months on-air it has shown dozens of matches from the Premier League and FA Cup, as well as hundreds of hours of live football from Scotland, Germany, Italy and France.
Rugby union will continue to be at the heart of BT Sport’s output, with fans set to enjoy even more live matches next season from the recently agreed European club tournaments.
BT Sport will have first picks and additional matches involving teams from the Aviva Premiership in the new European Rugby Champions Cup.
BT Sport’s football and rugby coverage, along with exclusive coverage of MotoGP, UFC, NBA basketball and WTA tennis, has seen about five million homes take BT Sport, making the channel one of the fastest growing TV services ever launched in the UK.
Around three million of those homes take the service directly from BT, either via satellite, BT TV or the BT Sport App alone, with the remainder taking the service via wholesale deals struck by BT.
Whilst BT Sport will remain free with BT Broadband for the 2014/15 season, it is likely that the telecoms firm will introduce some form of subscription element to its service to factor in the £900m deal for exclusive Champions League and Europa League rights from 2015/16 onwards.
The telecoms company has invested about £2bn so far on sports rights, as it battles with BSkyB for the upper hand in market share for broadband, telephone and TV services.
Sky and BT share live rights to Barclays Premier League matches, with Sky Sports screening 116 exclusively live compared to BT Sport’s 38 games.
Alongside the offer of free BT Sport for its broadband customers, non-BT internet customers can also watch the channels if they have a Sky satellite box.
BT Sport is currently £12 per month in standard definition and £15 a month in high definition. Virgin Media customers can also access the BT Sport channels for the same price or as part of their package if they take XL broadband from Virgin.
John Petter, BT Consumer chief executive, said: “Fans have been the winners with BT Sport. Millions of homes have enjoyed the very best sporting action for free. We said we would shake up the market and we have done just that.
“The great news for fans is that BT Sport will remain free with BT Broadband for another season, during which we will broadcast live action from the new European rugby tournaments.
“There has never been a better time to switch to BT Broadband so I would encourage sports fans to sign up.”
BT says it will inform customers as to when they need re-contract their BT Broadband package so that they can keep watching BT Sport at no extra cost.
Not a BT Sport subscriber? Find out how to get BT Sport via bt.com/sport
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