BSkyB chief executive Jeremy Darroch has said that the UK pay-television broadcaster would be “keen” to strike a “two-way” wholesale deal with telecommunications company BT, which owns rival pay-television broadcaster BT Sport.
Such a deal would allow BT to sell the Sky Sports 1 and 2 channels on the telco’s new YouView platform, with the BT Sport channels simultaneously made available through Sky.
“It has to be a two-way thing, so we'd want reciprocity in terms of supply. So if we can get there with BT, my position has always been very open to do that,” Darroch said, according to the Guardian newspaper.
A BT spokeswoman added: “We have always said we will wholesale BT Sport where it makes commercial sense for both parties. BT has always been open to reaching a commercial deal with Sky but they have resisted this to date.”
Earlier this month BT acquired exclusive live rights for the Uefa Champions League and Europa League club football competitions in a deal worth about £299m (€352.4m/$478.9m) per season, from 2015-16 to 2017-18.
Sky is the current UK pay-television rights-holder of the key Champions League property and the announcement of the BT deal saw Sky’s share price fall by about 11 per cent last week.