• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, March 7, 2017

BT paying 1.2 billion pounds for three more seasons of European football sounds like a lot of money for a very good reason -- it is. It will almost certainly lead to questions over why a broadband provider believes it is necessary to pay a billion pounds for football when it should be rolling out fibre across the country.

It's a good point, but there are a couple of plus points here for BT and the new deal with Uefa.

It turns out that the channel is getting a lot more games for its money, with some nights featuring staggered kickoffs. So that means many nights will have two games to lure in football fans and two sets of kickoff times to find the games the broadcaster thinks will bring in the greatest interest from advertisers.

All matches will have to be shown, but they can usually get around this by streaming them on an app while showing what are considered to be the most compelling ties on the big screen.

The other factor that has changed from 2018 onward is that the main competition, the Champions League, will see the top four teams from the top four-ranked leagues automatically qualify for the tournament. To be honest, that usually happens in the UK anyway, but it will certainly mean that more top teams will be in the competition, rather than the lower-ranked Europa League.

So the lineup of the teams taking part in the Champions League looks like it will have more of the huge teams that people want to see and potentially fewer of the minnows who are just there as whipping boys in the group stages.

Put simply, the main competition is set to become more attractive to football fans, and there will be staggered kickoff times so that two games can be shown each night. Before anyone gets into a rant about BT spending more than a billion on sports rights, it's worth pointing out that it has the potential for an improved competition with two prime-time slots for live games.

If it were to show two games at once on each of its main channels -- and it could even show more -- then that is at least four games or more to sell advertising for on a European football night.

One can imagine, then, that the free Sky Sports deals will carry on for a while, giving subscribers bill shock when they come to an end, but serving their purpose of getting people to choose BT Broadband and telephone services, perhaps even a BT tv set-top box, instead of giving their household's quad-play budget to Sky. 

And there lies the real impetus behind the sports rights rising by a third. Sky and BT are locked in a war, and sports are at the centre of the battleground. BT knows it can't come anywhere near the box set and cinema offer that Sky has. Right now, in the UK, nobody can even come close. So it has to pick its fights and go all out for football -- and right now, the way the calendar works, that means European football.

There will be a series of price wars between the two for the top sports rights, and right now that means BT had to spend more than a billion on European football.

It's a crazy amount, but at least consider the improved competition and staggered kickoffs before tearing your hair out and writing a stiff letter to Ofcom.