Tuesday 2 April 2013

Tech Tuesday - BT Sport - the birth of a new media giant?




Towards the end of this Summer BT Sport are aiming to launch two new channels. This has been a massive undertaking. Many have entered the sports media world since the birth of Sky Sports and all have died.

Think of Ondigital Sport, Setanta Sport, ESPN, ITV Sport etc etc. indeed even the BBC has lost nearly all, it's sports rights.



BT are opening a huge new sports media complex on the Olympic site, allocated billions on sports rights and committed to the project for a decade saying it will sit alongside their broadband and tv offerings.

So far they have nabbed some premiership games, the rugby Aviva premiership, WTA, bought out ESPN etc and shown they mean business.



They have also hired some quite big "talent" like Clare Balding and Lawrence Dallaglio. Getting all the tech in place too has been tricky and they have signed some pretty big deals with production companies to make sure all the sport is covered.

The channels will definitely be available on Sky and Bt Vision, alongside you view and also hopefully Virgin media.

Lets see how it pans out but it's a big step in the media tech world. Can they compete with Sky? They have the funds from their other businesses to do so and that's a good start.

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