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MWC The recent bidding for English Premier League broadcasting rights carried an air of mystery and high stakes. Would this be the year digital disruptors — the Amazons, the Facebooks and similar players — finally claimed a share of the market?
In short: not this time. Sky and BT Sport retained the primary packages, securing rights worth £4.464 billion for matches from 2019 to 2022. Two smaller rights packages remain unresolved. BT highlighted that it maintained financial discipline throughout the process and said it remains well placed to earn a return on this investment via subscription, wholesale, commercial and advertising revenues. The company also noted that its acquisition of EE will play a useful role in achieving those goals.
So what does this outcome mean for BT’s content strategy? In a revealing keynote at Mobile World Congress, BT Group CEO Gavin Patterson shared his views on sports rights, emerging technologies, and how the company positions itself relative to streaming giants like Netflix.
BT’s approach is distinctive. On some content fronts it is willing to invest directly; on others it prefers to act as a “super-aggregator,” bringing together third-party services. Janice Hughes, co-founder and director at Redshift Strategy — a firm focused on technology, media, telecom and sports — opened the session by observing that consumers are flocking to over-the-top (OTT) platforms for high-end drama. She described this trend as a radical shift in viewing behavior and suggested that fixed and mobile operators can tap new revenue streams by offering premium drama and sports content on devices like iPads through the right OTT partnerships and strategy.
The complication for BT is that it spans both worlds. Patterson reminded the audience that BT once had a mobile division in the 1990s and has been aiming to re-establish a mobile presence rather than remain strictly a fixed-line operator. That ambition explains the EE acquisition. “It was a great business when we acquired it, and it’s turned out to be an even better business now that we’ve gotten under the bonnet of it,” Patterson said.
On sports specifically, Patterson expressed satisfaction with BT’s progress. “We’ve been in the market four and a half years, and we’re happy with where we are,” he said. “We find it’s a way of creating true differentiation for our broadband service. By closely integrating content and technology, we can bring content to life and push the envelope on customer experience.”
That view helps explain why BT does not aim to compete directly with Netflix and Amazon in the drama space. “We’re lucky in a sense,” Patterson said. “We can embrace Netflix. It’s a reason why people want to use our service. We’re not trying to force a pay-TV or entertainment bundle in the same way, and I think that’s how the model will evolve.”
Patterson described Netflix as a phenomenon that network operators cannot ignore. “No one running a network can be in denial about that,” he said. “You only need to look at the volume and usage on the network. Denying that your customers want it is ridiculous.”
Looking ahead, Hughes probed whether BT has plans around virtual reality and whether EE’s assets would help beyond its subscriber base. Patterson pointed to BT’s work in bringing advanced techniques such as virtual reality, social media innovation and mobile integration into its offerings. “We’ve been able to show how much innovation you can deliver when you let technology and content work together,” he said.
The keynote also featured Cher Wang, CEO of HTC, who spoke about the convergence of 5G, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence, and how those technologies could reshape everyday life.
“5G and AI are a perfect match for both VR and AR,” Wang said. “5G will significantly expand VR and AR capabilities by leveraging cloud-based supercomputing power and reducing device power consumption.”
“Today, we spend a lot of time learning how to use our gadgets,” she added. “In the future, our gadgets will understand us better than we understand ourselves. VR and AR will become essential portals to access the power of AI.”