Gavin Patterson, chief executive of UK telco BT, has hit out at the “rampant inflation” in the prices being paid for sports rights, with the firm’s pay-television broadcaster, BT Sport, currently seeking to retain one of its prized assets.
First-round bids for the next set of UK rights to the Uefa Champions League and Europa League club football competitions were submitted this Wednesday. BT acquired exclusive UK rights for the two competitions from 2015-16 to 2017-18 for €1.075bn ($1.14bn), and The Guardian newspaper said European football’s governing body is seeking an increase of up to 30 per cent from any new deal.
An agreement could be announced as soon as next week and speaking at the annual Enders Analysis conference in London, Patterson said “rampant inflation in sports rights” has to end.
In January, BT said an accounting scandal concerning its Italian division would have no impact on BT Sport. BT saw almost £8bn (€9.39bn/$9.97bn), or more than a fifth, taken off its stock market value on January 24 after disclosing that the scandal was much worse than originally stated. The company also warned of a slowdown in other operations, with international corporate clients and UK government departments reducing their spending after the Brexit vote.
As a result, BT said profits would be £300m lower than previously expected for this year, down from a forecast £7.9bn to £7.6bn. Patterson said a limited period of inflation was to be expected after BT Sport entered the UK sports-rights market in 2012 by swooping to take a significant portion of rights to the English Premier League.
“Naturally when we came in (to the market) there would (always be) be some inflation,” he said, according to The Guardian. “At some point it will stabilise … The sport market is pretty saturated in terms of viewers and consumption today. I do hope at some point in the future we can find a stable equilibrium.”
Patterson also appeared to play down BT’s appetite for an all-out bidding war for the Uefa rights, saying the company did not necessarily need to regain exclusive broadcast rights to achieve its goals.
“We don’t need to be number one in the sports market, but we do need to be a viable number two,” he added.