UK pay-television broadcaster BT Sport has agreed a three-year carriage deal with pay-television operator Virgin Media ahead of the start of its coverage of English Premier League football this weekend.
The wholesale deal will enable Virgin Media to offer BT Sport directly to its 3.8m television customers.
It means the BT Sport 1 and 2 channels are now available across all major television platforms in the UK including cable, satellite and DTT. The channels are also accessible via broadband internet.
The two parties have been in negotiations for a number of months, with one of the sticking points understood to have been whether Virgin would bundle the new channels in with its XL TV premium package – the route it previously took with ESPN’s sports content – or whether it would charge for them as a standalone product.
BT said the new agreement will enable Virgin Media to provide BT Sport 1, BT Sport 2 and ESPN to their XL TV customers as part of their packages, without the need for those customers to take any action.
This means around three million households are ready to watch BT Sport in advance of the Premier League and English Premiership rugby union seasons commencing.
The agreement also enables Virgin Media to offer the channels as a standalone premium service to television customers who do not take the XL pack.
This is similar to BT’s offer to customers of pay-television operator BSkyB who can pay £12 (€14/$18) per month for BT Sport in standard definition and £15 per month in high definition.
Marc Watson, BT TV chief executive, said: “BT has made a large investment in BT Sport and this is an important commercial agreement for us that recognises the excellence of the channels. We are keen to make our services as widely available as possible and to do so via wholesale arrangements. We are doing this with BT Sport.”
BT Sport’s content includes 38 exclusively live football matches from the 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 are also set to feature prominently, with BT Sport showing up to 69 live rugby union games per season from the 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.