Sky high bids top £5bn for Premier League TV football rights February 10, 2015 Sky footed a huge £4.2bn bill last night in order to maintain its grip on Premier League football. The media giant will show 126 Premier League football matches per season from 2016 to 2019. It will pay over £11m for each game. The bill is an eye-watering 83 per cent increase over Sky’s existing three-year [...]
Sky and BT win Premier League rights: The billions keep pouring in, but do fans benefit from football’s boom? February 10, 2015 The flood of cash pouring into the Premier League each year just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Many fans roll their eyes as the numbers in football become increasingly astronomical – but do supporters of top flight teams benefit from the growing billions that TV firms put in? In terms of ticket prices, the answer [...]
Premier League sells TV rights for record £5.14bn to Sky and BT February 10, 2015 Premier League games are worth more money than ever before after the league agreed a new TV rights deal worth an incredible £5.136bn with Sky and BT. The average live Premier League football game will cost £10.2m to screen from the 2016-17 onwards, after Sky and BT shared the 168 games split across [...]
From Greece to Scotland via BT and EE: What got us talking this week February 6, 2015 It was all Greek to us this week Specifically, Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who visited London as part of a Europe-wide charm offensive to support his plan for solving the small matter of the country's giant debt. Free market think tank Adam Smith Institute gave its backing to his debt restructuring [...]
Premier League set for £4bn in TV auction bids and Sky and BT prepare for battle February 5, 2015 Today marks the closing of the deadline for bids in the multi-billion pound auction for the UK TV broadcast rights of the Premier League. The three seasons to 2019 of the most-watched football league in the world will certainly see BT and Sky battle it out for the coveted rights. But with the added possibility [...]
BT set for a year of scrutiny on £12.5bn EE deal February 5, 2015 BT has sealed its deal to buy mobile operator EE in a whopping £12.5bn transaction. The British telecoms giant said the deal will likely face a year of investigation by the UK’s merger and regulatory authorities completing sometime next year. The transaction will combine BT’s more than 10m retail customers and EE’s 24.5m mobile [...]
BT share price soars after agreeing deal to buy mobile network EE for £12.5bn February 5, 2015 BT's share price soared today after it agreed terms to buy mobile phone network EE for £12.5bn. The deal, which will give BT access to EE’s 31m customers and the largest 4G network in Europe, will be paid in a combination of cash and ordinary BT shares, issued to both Deutsche Telekom (DT) and Orange. The transfer [...]
Ofcom refuses Virgin Media’s request to delay Premier League rights broadcast auction February 4, 2015 Ofcom has refused a request made by Virgin Media to delay the auction of Premier League broadcast rights. The high-stakes bidding for the rights to broadcast the UK’s biggest football games will now continue as usual and is expected next week. Virgin Media is not making a bid for the rights, but the auction is [...]
BT Sport website and app go down as Manchester United, Fulham and Sheffield United play FA Cup games February 3, 2015 BT has suffered an outage of its website and app leaving BT Sport customers unable to watch three fourth-round FA Cup replay matches. Football fans planning to watch the live games on computers through BT Sport’s online player or via mobile on the BT Sport app have been unable to watch the action, including League [...]
BT’s pension deficit hits £7bn while profits rise from TV, broadband and sport customers January 30, 2015 The figures In its third quarter results, BT revealed revenue slipped two per cent to £13.2bn in the nine months to 31 December, while adjusted pre-tax profit leaped 11 per cent to £2.1bn. BT's consumer division, including TV, broadband and those all-important BT Sport customers, increased pre-tax profit by 43 per cent to £251m. Its business division also grew [...]