It may be just an extension of a deal already announced in Britain but the extension of Sky and BT’s partnership in relation to their sports channels will have a major impact on a number of players here in Ireland.
In a statement this morning Sky confirmed that it is to become BT Sport’s exclusive distribution partner in Ireland. This will lead from the summer of 2019 to a single sports subscription package covering all of the two former rivals rights in sport including all of the Premier League, Champions’ League Europa League and Heineken Champions Cup matches they have between them.
BT Sport Channels have previously been distributed, as they are for the remainder of this football and rugby season as part of the eir Sport package.
The loss of such high profile games will be a blow to eir Sport who will have benefitted also from BT Sports arrangement to cover UFC fights including all of Conor McGregor’s bouts to this point.
The stations will remain strong in certain areas, particularly in rugby where they have almost exclusive coverage of the Guinness PRO 14 showing all games as well as rights within the Allianz National League and the AIB Club Championships in GAA and the biggest of all the Rugby World Cup Finals in the autumn of 2019.
Soccer has traditionally been the biggest driver of Pay TV across the world though and Ireland has not been an exception up to this point.
Sky’s customer base is substantially larger than those who are paying for either the eir Sport package or the new Virgin Sport package where Champions’ League games are also being shown.
In a world of TV rights where there has been so much fragmentation over recent months, this is a move which will aggregate more of the highest end content in a single subscription and likely be seen as a winner by sports fans who were growing increasingly confused by the number of different accounts they needed to stay on top of all the sports action.
“This is fantastic news for Sky customers in Ireland,” said JD Buckley, Managing Director of Sky Ireland this morning.
“They will now be able to access all matches on both Sky and BT directly with a single SKY TV subscription.”