NO WONDER BT BILLS ARE RISING
BT has paid £ 1.2billion for exclusive TV rights to European football as millions of customers face inflation- busting price hikes.
The telecoms giant, which is positioning itself as a major sports broadcaster, outbid rivals at Sky.
BT will pay £394million a year for the right to cover the Champions League and Europa League until 2021 – despite fears over falling viewing figures.
The deal is almost £100million a year more than its current arrangement for high-profile live games.
It appears that the massive increase is being passed on to customers, whether they like sport or not.
Both BT and Sky, which is paying billions for Premier League games, have imposed a series of inflation-beating price rises across their services in recent years. Customers and consumer groups have blasted BT for putting up charges three times in just 18 months.
The latest increase – of about 5-6 per cent – will come into force from April 2. Basic broadband customers will pay £2 more a month and BT Infinity fibre customers an extra £2.50. Standard landline and mobile calls will go up 1p per minute to 12p and 16p respectively. BT Sport, previously included as a free extra, will now cost BT TV customers £3.50 a month or £42 for a yearly subscription from next season.
The firm’s anytime call plans will increase by 49p from £ 8.99 a month, with evening and weekend call plans up 30p to £3.80 per month.
Rivals Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media have all announced similar price rises over the past year.
BT’s own chief executive, Gavin Patterson, has spoken of the spiralling cost of sports rights. Last week, he warned that rampant price rises for sport must come to an end. But BT’s chief executive of consumer business, John Petter, said the company is paying for the football rights using more than £1billion generated by its consumer business including advertising revenues.
‘This isn’t about customers paying top dollar, this is about customers paying very affordable prices. Our prices start from £3.50.’ BT’s current TV deal to cover European football, which began in 2015, includes selling a highlights package to ITV.
Experts said the only beneficiaries of price rises at BT and Sky appears to be those who like sport, particularly football.
Broadband expert at uSwitch. com, Ewan Taylor- Gibson, said: ‘In return for these price increases, consumers will quite rightly expect to see their service vastly improved although, when it comes to TV content, it appears only sports fans are going to be happy.’ UK television ratings for the live coverage of Champions League games have nosedived since it moved to BT. It was previously shared by Sky and ITV.
Many games are shown on the free digital channel BT Showcase, which has attracted an average peak audience of less than 200,000. The peak viewing figure for live games featuring an English club averaged 4.4 million on ITV.
Bosses at Uefa, which runs the competitions, were said to be alarmed at the drop-off but appear to have been swayed by the high price offered for exclusive rights by BT, whose coverage team includes Gary Lineker.
BT will pay an average of £1.1million per game for the 343 Euro-
‘Only sports fans will be happy’
pean games over a season. Paolo Pescatore, of tech analysts CCS Insight, warned that the move would be ‘worrying’ for BT’s millions of customers.
On Twitter, many customers expressed outrage at the prospect of higher bills to pay for football coverage. John M Thomson wrote: ‘Why doesn’t BT concentrate on fibre broadband instead of wasting money on football?’
Another said the moved equalled ‘4 years of price increases for every BT customer to pay for this even if they don’t watch’.