BT Group Plc (LON:BT.A) has pulled something of a video streaming rabbit out of the hat following scrutiny over its free to air arrangements for European club football matches.
The telecoms (and more recently TV) bundler has announced a tie-up with Google’s YouTube for the broadcast of the UEFA Champions League and Europa League finals.
It will see BT’s broadcast from its Freeview BT Sport Showcase channel streamed online, and the company says this will make the matches available to millions of additional fans who do not yet subscribe to BT Sport.
The YouTube tie up comes after reports in the media that UEFA officials had begun to see the transfer of TV rights from terrestrial TV broadcaster ITV to BT as a mistake because of reduced audience figures.
BT’s record breaking three year Champions League TV rights deal, estimated to be worth almost £900mln, came with obligations to include a certain number of ‘free to air’ matches. Tendering for UEFA’s next licensing period is expected to begin later this year.
John Petter, chief executive BT Consumer, in a statement said: “We’ve always said we wanted to give top quality sport back to the people and making the UEFA Champions League and Europa League finals free to everyone in the UK does this in a big way.
He added: “Both BT and UEFA are delighted with what we have achieved in our first year as the broadcaster of the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League.”
In London, BT shares were up 5.65p or 1.3% on Thursday, changing hands at 442.5p.