UK telecommunications company BT has announced that more than one million households have signed up to its new BT Sport pay-television service in its first three months.
BT had previously said that 500,000 customers of its total pay-television base had signed up for BT Sport between May 10 and July 25, with the majority being existing broadband customers.
The one million mark has been reached between May 10, when BT first started taking orders, and August 10. The Guardian newspaper said Setanta, a previous challenger to BSkyB's dominance of the UK pay-television market, took four months to reach the one million mark, though they were all paying customers.
BT Sport is being offered for free with BT broadband. BT said BT Sport’s customer base has a mix of existing BT broadband customers – who have re-contracted their broadband for at least 12 months – and new broadband customers who have been attracted by BT Sport.
John Petter, BT Consumer managing director, said: “We always said that BT Sport would help us retain and attract broadband customers and that is proving to be the case. We are rewarding our customers for their loyalty and the strategy is working. The market needed a new entrant to shake things up and that is precisely what we are doing. It is clear that many customers want BT Sport as well as Sky Sports. The good news for those customers is that they can do exactly that, and save a lot of money by taking our broadband and getting BT Sport for free.”
BT Sport’s content includes 38 exclusively live football matches from the English Premier League, including 18 of the ‘top picks’, for each of the next three seasons. The channels will also show live FA Cup matches for the next five seasons.
Rugby and tennis will also feature prominently with BT Sport showing up to 69 live rugby union games a season from the English Premiership, in a deal spanning the 2013-14 to 2016-17 campaigns, as well as up to 800 hours of live women’s tennis from the WTA Tour under a four-year contract from 2013 to 2016.