BT

DAZN Group, the global sports streaming service and media group, has announced the appointment of former BT commercial, marketing and digital executive Pete Oliver as its new chief marketing officer

Telecoms company BT has agreed terms with media group Warner Bros

DAZN chairman Kevin Mayer said his company’s attempts to acquire UK pay-television broadcaster BT Sport “became uneconomical” after a rival bid from Discovery increased BT’s demands in the final throes of negotiations.

As DAZN Group’s protracted effort to acquire BT Sport reaches its conclusion in one way or another, neither party wants to make final concessions to seal a deal before the year’s end.

The UK government has said it is “monitoring the situation carefully” after Altice UK, owned by French billionaire Patrick Drahi, further increased its stake in telco BT.

US media group Discovery is in talks to form a joint venture with BT concerning the UK telco’s BT Sport arm, according to reports.

The UK government has approved the English Premier League’s rolling over of its current broadcast deals with Sky Sports, BT Sport, Amazon Prime and BBC Sport for another three years.

French telco Altice has acquired a 12.1-per-cent stake in UK counterpart BT, but has maintained this will not lead to a takeover offer

The new three-year deals, from 2022-23 to 2024-25, would replicate the current three-year deals, from 2019-20 to 2021-22. This includes the duration, the fee and the number of matches.

A lack of competition, Sky’s reduced appetite for international cricket and match delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have driven down the value of Sri Lanka Cricket’s rights in the UK.

UK telecoms operator BT has, for the first time, made its pay-television BT Sport channels available on a monthly basis without a contract

Match-choice restrictions placed by Spain’s LaLiga on the free-to-air package in its UK and Ireland rights tenders for the 2019-22 cycle may limit interest from broadcasters, according to industry experts spoken to by SportBusiness Media.

Amazon secured Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour rights in the UK for the 2020-23 cycle with a bid nearly 60 per cent higher than incumbent pay-television broadcaster BT Sport's current fee, SportBusiness Media understands, as the tech and ecommerce giant moves to establish a dominant position in UK tennis broadcasting.

BT Sport has agreed a deal to televise new boxing format Ultimate Boxxer across its pay-television, YouTube and BoxNation channels

Sky and BT have extended and expanded an agreement through which the rival UK pay-television broadcasters share content across each other’s platforms.

The English Premier League has been granted an order by the UK’s High Court that will allow it to disrupt and block illegal streams of its football matches for the duration of the 2018-19 season.