BT has complained to UK media regulator Ofcom about pay-television broadcaster BSkyB’s refusal to show advertisements on its sports channels promoting the telecommunications company’s planned new sports pay-television service, according to the Guardian newspaper.
The report said that BT had accused Sky of “undue discrimination” after refusing to show the campaign highlighting the telecommunications company’s future coverage of English football’s top-flight Premier League and English rugby union’s top-tier Premiership, as well as other sports.
“We are happy to take Sky’s advertising but they seem afraid of taking ours,” BT Retail managing director John Petter said. “It’s like a rottweiler running away from a newborn puppy.”
A Sky spokeswoman said that the broadcaster would not carry the campaign on its portfolio of sports channels, but said that BT could advertise on any of the other channels through which Sky sells advertising spots.
“There are many other avenues for BT to advertise its sports channels without seeking to take advantage of the investments that we’ve made to build Sky Sports,” she said. “It’s entirely reasonable for us to choose not to carry advertising for a directly competing service.”
The report added that BT currently does not have a carriage deal in place for its new sports service to be available on Sky platforms.
BT acquired live rights for 38 Premier League matches per season in a three-year deal, from 2013-14 to 2015-16, with Sky retaining its position as the league’s primary rights-holder in the UK by securing the other five packages of live domestic rights, totalling 116 matches per season.
The report added that BT’s coverage of the Premier League would begin on August 17.