BT Sport have become the biggest threat to Sky Sports' monopoly on football, with an enormous well of resources from which to draw the money necessary to bid big on sport. They have sequestered away the Champions League, and have also taken some of the Premier League rights. The threat of their taking away more convinced Sky to commit to an enormous increase (83%!) in their outlay on the Premier League in the most recent round of bidding.
A report in today's Telegraph, however, claims that personnel changes and restructuring within BT may see a massive scale back of spending on football rights.
John Petter has this week left his role as the telecoms giant's Consumer Chief, and was reportedly a close ally of CEO Gavin Patterson. Both have argued in favour of a high spend on football rights, and earned the investment they had argued for to maintain exclusive rights for the Champions League over the next three seasons.
Patterson had hoped that his ally Petter would take ownership of this strategy, but the man to whom it is now assigned is Simon Lowth, BT's chief financial officer. The Telegraph write that Lowth has "urged caution over spending on the Champions League as the company faces a potential increase in pension deficit payments and massive pressure to invest more in its network and customer service operation".
This could have an effect as early as next year, when the Premier League rights go up for auction. In terms of how it will change, the paper speculates they may pick up the cheapest package of games.
Sky will be back at the table, with rumours claiming that Amazon are interested in coming to the party too, having sealed live rights to the ATP Tour earlier this week.
Update:
BT have released a statement affirming their commitment to BT Sport. This, from a BT spokesperson:
We remaining fully committed to BT Sport, which is a key area of focus for us. The business is going from strength to strength, with BT Sport’s average audience figures increasing by 9%. Our UEFA Champions League rights have recently been secured until the end of the 2021 season and we've also extended and grown our European Rugby Champions Cup and the European Rugby Challenge Cup rights.
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