Rivals BT and Sky bury hatchet and unveil channel-sharing agreement

Deal will lead to additional content for subscribers including live Uefa games

Sky and BT have announced a deal that will allow the rival broadcasters to sell their channels on each others’ platforms.

Under the terms of the agreement unveiled y ester day, BT will wholesale its BT Sport channels to Sky, allowing the firm to sell them directly to Sky satellite customers. This will mean BT’S live Uefa Champions League and Premier League football being made available on the Sky platform.

BT has spent north of £3.5 billion on Champions League and Premier League football rights since 2012 in an effort to compete with Sky.

The deal between the two giants will also see BT “market and sell” Sky’s Now TV service to its customers. Now TV offers Sky’s most popular content, including Sky Sports, Sky Cinema and the Sky Atlantic channel.

Gavin Patterson, chief executive of BT, said: “This is an important day for BT and for our customers, who will be able to enjoy a whole range of Sky’s sport and entertainment programming on their BT TV boxes.

“This is the next logical step for our TV and content strategy. Having built up an outstanding portfolio of exclusive sports rights and a loyal base of customers, we feel that now is the right time to broaden the ways in which we distribute BT Sport.”

It is anticipated that the new services will be available to customers from early 2019.

Sky group chief executive Jeremy Darroch said: “This is great news for Sky customers who will be able to access all matches on Sky and BT channels from the Premier League, Uefa Champions League and Europa League directly with a single Sky TV subscription and with the great customer service that we provide.

“UK consumers will have even more ways to watch great Sky entertainment content with our leading portfolio of channels … available on all major pay-tv platforms for the first time.”

It comes after Rupert Murdoch said Sky was the asset he is parting with most reluctantly after Walt Disney launched a $52.4bn (£39bn) takeover of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets this week.

Disney has swooped for a significant slice of the media mogul’s empire, including Fox’s film and TV studios, and its 39 per cent stake in Sky.