BT Sport to remain free with BT Broadband for a second season

Channels now taken by around five million homes

Millions of homes will be able to enjoy BT Sport for free for another season 1 it was announced today. That is because BT has decided to continue offering BT Sport for free to new and re-contracting BT Broadband customers. 

The great news for sports fans came as BT revealed around five million homes now take BT Sport, just nine months after the channels went live for the first time last August. This makes BT Sport one of the fastest growing TV services ever launched in the UK. 

Around three million of those homes take the service directly from BT – either via satellite, BT TV or the BT Sport App alone – with the remainder taking the service via wholesale deals struck by BT. 

BT Sport has had a strong debut season in which it has shown dozens of exciting matches from the Barclays Premier League and FA Cup - many of which attracted average audiences of more than a million homes - as well as hundreds of hours of live football from Scotland, Germany, Italy and France. Customers have also been able to enjoy exclusive live coverage of Moto GP races as well as other sporting action including UFC, 

NBA basketball, women’s tennis and women’s football. 

Rugby has been at the heart of BT Sport and fans are set to enjoy live matches from the new recently agreed European club tournaments. These will include a terrific 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 2 . 

John Petter, BT Consumer chief executive said: "Fans have been the winners with BT Sport. Millions of homes have enjoyed the very best sporting action for free. We said we would shake up the market and we have done just that. 

"The great news for fans is that BT Sport will remain free with BT Broadband for another season, during which we will broadcast live action from the new European rugby tournaments. There has never been a better time to switch to BT Broadband so I would encourage sports fans to sign up." 

BT also announced today that its set top box service BT TV has passed the one million milestone with the majority of those homes taking BT Sport. BT TV customers can access more than 150 channels as well as a huge library of on demand content, including premium movies and box sets, via their broadband. 

Whilst BT Sport will remain free with BT Broadband for another season, non BT Broadband customers can also watch the channels if they have a Sky satellite box. BT Sport is currently £12 a month in standard definition and £15 a month in high definition. Virgin Media customers can also access the BT Sport channels for the same price or as part of their package if they take XL broadband from Virgin. 

BT Sport was introduced to help BT Consumer return to top and bottom line growth. It has helped BT to grow its broadband base and to improve its share of broadband net adds in what is a highly competitive market. It has also helped the business to grow its TV revenues and to significantly reduce the number of line losses. All of these improvements have helped BT Consumer to grow its revenues. 

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[1] English and Scottish football season

[2] BT has agreed in principle to share live broadcast coverage of these tournaments with Sky Sports