BT is launching a new sports venture with US entertainment giant Discovery, the latest sign of its ambitions under CEO Philip Jansen.
That link up would pring BT Sport together with Eurosport UK, giving UK customers access to Discovery’s content.
That would seem to bring an end to talk that the telecom giant will offload BT Sport – at least for now. A sale latter remains a possibility, with Discovery plainly in pole position.
That’s a blow to sport streaming business DAZN, which had hoped to grab BT Sport.
Marc Allera, CEO BT Consumer, said: "The proposed joint venture with Discovery, Inc. would create an exciting new sports broadcasting entity for the UK and would act as a perfect home for our BT Sport business.
“With a shared ambition for growth, as well as the combination of our world class sports assets along with Discovery’s premium sports and entertainment content, our customers will benefit from even more content in more places."
BT Sport has attracted two million customers and has broken even under Allera.
BT has also signed a fresh 10 -year deal with Sky for channel sharing, a sign of how intense competition is from Netflix, Amazon and other content providers.
These moves are likely to ensure that Patrick Drahi, the billionaire Frenchman who became the biggest BT shareholder last year, remains supportive. Drahi owns French telco Altice and is said to believe BT should profit from how vital strong internet connections have become due to Covid.
Altice has said it has no intention of bidding for BT, something the government might block in any case.
In the nine months to December revenues slipped 2% to £15.7 billion, a “disappointment”, Jansen admitted, which is down to supply chain challenges and slower growth in the corporate sector. Profit also slipped 3% to £1.53 billion.
But BT’s rollout of ultra-fast full fibre broadband is moving apace. BT is getting that internet offer into 50,000 new premises a week, it has reached 6.5 million of them so far, including two million rural premises.
Ben Barringer at Quilter Cheviot said:
BT’s numbers were a little disappointing this morning, and guidance was reduced a little. However, there were two positive developments relating to BT Sport. The first is the fact that it looks like BT will enter a joint venture between BT Sport and Discovery’s Eurosport UK, which will consolidate the footprint of sport in the UK. Second, BT has entered into another reciprocal wholesaling agreement with Sky for sports coverage until 2030. This will continue to ease the cold war between the two providers considerably and in doing so save money for BT.
BT shares have had a strong start to the year, up 8% since Christmas. Today they opened down a little at 187p.
