BT Sport channels attract 2 million customers

Telecoms company enjoys rekindling of consumer business with sales rise of 4% in second quarter, the best for 10 years

BT's multimillion-pound venture into sports broadcasting has rekindled its consumer business, with 2 million viewers now signed up to the BT Sportchannels.

Revenues from consumer sales are up 4% in the September quarter, the best performance for 10 years, and BT's television service has added 70,000 subscribers, more than in any quarter since 2008. A further 156,000 customers signed for broadband, meaning BT grabbed the lion's share of new internet subscribers in the quarter.

BT is spending an estimated £1.5bn over three years on premier league football rights, big name presenters Jake Humphries and Clare Balding and lavish television studios in the former Olympic park, in an effort to stop the leakage of customers to rivals Sky and TalkTalk.

The loss of customers with a BT telephone line – a key measure of defections from the company – fell to 65,000 for the quarter, the best performance in five years. The telecoms firm beat City forecasts to report revenues flat at £4,491m, comfortably outstripping the consensus forecast of £4,440m, while profit before tax was also ahead at £499m.

"BT Sport has made a confident start and is already delivering for viewers," said chief executive Gavin Patterson, presenting his first financial results since taking over from Ian Livingston. "More than 2 million of our customers are signed up to it and our wholesale contract with Virgin Media means it is available to around four million homes in total."

BT now has 900,000 television customers – still some way behind Virgin's 3.8m and Sky's 10.5m. But its broadband and TV signings were ahead of Sky for September – the satellite broadcaster added 111,000 broadband customers and 37,000 to its television service.

Jerry Dellis, an analyst at Jefferies bank, said fears Sky had successfully countered the impact of BT Sport by giving away broadband free to TV subscribers had been overblown. "Robust broadband net adds from BSkyB … had raised some concern that BT's heavy investment in TV might be having rather limited initial impact at stemming the loss of retail lines within the BT base. In fact BT Retail KPIs are quite encouraging."

BT increased its interim dividend by 13% to 3.4 pence per share, and investors bumped the stock up 6.5p to 376p in early trading before the shares fell back to 372p.

Days after its August launch, BT Sport reached 1 million direct subscribers. That number has now doubled to 2 million. More than half are Sky subscribers watching via satellite, while others are viewing the programmes online or via the BT Sport app.

Following a deal signed a £75m a year deal with Virgin Media, which is offering the channels free to the 2 million customers who are already signed up to its most expensive TV package, the BT channels now have a potential audience of 4 million.

Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk
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