UK telecommunications company BT will continue to make its BT Sport pay-television channels freely available to its broadband customers through the 2014-15 English and Scottish football season.
BT Sport launched ahead of the 2013-14 football season, with a live rights package for English Premier League matches standing as its flagship property. The Premier League, FA Cup and the Scottish Professional Football League will remain available across the BT Sport 1, BT Sport 2 and ESPN channels next season.
BT said BT Sport now reaches five million homes in the UK, with three million of those taking the service directly from BT, either via satellite, BT TV or the BT Sport app, and the remaining viewers receiving the service via wholesale deals.
Whilst BT Sport will remain free with BT Broadband for another season, non BT Broadband customers can also watch the channels if they have a satellite box through pay-television operator BSkyB. Customers of telecommunications firm Virgin Media can also access the BT Sport channels if they take the XL broadband package 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.”
BT’s extension of the offer comes after BT Sport and Sky this month reached an agreement in principle on a four-year deal to share the rights to the new European Champions Cup and European Challenge Cup club rugby union competitions from the 2014-15 season. BT Sport will have first picks and additional matches involving teams from the English Premiership in the tournament.
Last November, BT agreed to pay about £299m (€352.4m/$478.9m) per season for the exclusive live rights to the Uefa Champions League and Europa League club football competitions in the UK for three years, from 2015-16 to 2017-18.