BT viewer figures beat Sky data in English Premier League opening clash

Some 515,000 people tuned in to BT Sport on Saturday evening to watch Manchester City beat Sunderland 2-1 in an English Premier League opener.

This represents 39,500 more viewers than the Leicester City-Hull City game on Sky’s sports channel earlier in the day as the champions unexpectedly lost 2-1 to the newly promoted underdogs.

The performance of the rivals’ soccer broadcasts will be watched closely this season, because BT for the first time outbid Sky for the Premier League’s popular late afternoon Saturday matches, which often draw bigger audiences compared with the 12.30pm games.

BT started showing top-tier UK soccer in 2013 and added a £960m (€1.1bn), three-year package starting this season.

“BT has definitely come of age,” said Ian Whittaker, an analyst at broker Liberum.

“Football was always associated with Sky, but over time that idea has been slowly seeping away.”

Sky still has the lion’s share of TV rights for Premier League — 126 this season, compared with 42 for BT.

In addition to Saturday games, it shows matches on Sundays, Mondays, and, for the first time, Fridays. The Arsenal-Liverpool game on Sunday afternoon, a seven-goal thriller, attracted more than 2m viewers at its peak, Sky said.

“It has been a great first weekend of the Premier League season for Sky and our customers,” Sky Sports managing director Barney Francis said in a statement.

“The unpredictability of the competition has continued and we’ve had a strong response from customers.”

Unlike free broadcasters, which depend on large audiences to generate advertising revenue, pay-TV providers usually focus on subscriber numbers.

Sky paid £4.2bn to renew its three-year deal with the Premier League, an increase of 83%, and the company is eager to show results.

“Even though Sky is still growing in terms of subscribers and revenues in the UK and Ireland, it’s going to be a challenge managing this sizable increase in costs,” said Tim Westcott, an analyst at IHS Technology.

As part of an effort to stem subscriber losses, BT has been adding sports programming, including the rights to UEFA Champions League and Europa League.

Separately, mobile phone company Spark New Zealand said yesterday that it was formally opposing a merger between Sky and Vodafone’s New Zealand unit, stating that Sky’s monopoly on premium sports content rights in New Zealand is a key concern.