BT rolls free-sport broadband offer into second season

30th Apr 2014 11:17

BT has confirmed it will continue to offer its BT Sport television channels free for customers who subscribe to its broadband service. The FTSE 100 group said around 5m homes have taken up BT Sport in the nine months since the channels went live last August and that its set-top box service BT TV has passed the 1m-customer milestone, with the majority of those homes taking BT Sport.BT Consumer Chief Executive John Petter said: "We said we would shake up the market and we have done just that."The company said the take up of the channels makes BT Sport one of the fastest growing TV services ever launched in the UK.As well as a strong football offering, rugby has been a key part of BT Sport's appeal and the company has recently agreed to share live broadcast with Sky and so enabled European clubs to create two new European club tournaments. These will include a selection of matches featuring English clubs in the European Rugby Champions Cup, as BT will have first picks and additional matches involving teams from the Aviva Premiership in the tournament.In November BT bought the rights to the Champions League football tournament, but its coverage of this competition does not begin until summer 2015.The news gave shares in BT a slight lift but were still down 1.5% to 368.3p by 11:28 on Wednesday.OH