BT to stream Champions League final on YouTube

BT Sport

UK pay TV provider BT will stream the finals of the UEFA Champions League and Europa League on video platform YouTube.

A deal with the Google-owned aggregator will see the Freeview BT Sport Showcase channel streamed and made available to non-paying viewers.

The Champions League final, which is European club football’s biggest game, sees two teams from the Spanish capital, Real Madrid and Athletico Madrid, facing off on May 28. Ten days before that, England’s Liverpool plays another Spanish team, Sevilla, in the Europe League final.

“We’ve always said we wanted to give top quality sport back to the people and making the UEFA Champions League and Europa League finals free to everyone in the UK does this in a big way,” said BT Consumer chief executive John Petter.

YouTube’s senior director, EMEA, and former Sky executive, Stephen Nuttall, said football was the platform’s most-viewed sport, with more than 300 clubs, 37 leagues and various channels providing content.

BT Sport launched three years ago as the first serious competitor to premium sports provider Sky, and has gone on to snap up Champions League and English Premier League games. BT claims around five million subscribers for its sports networks.

BT said the YouTube deal represented a wider digital strategy that includes allowing 4GEE customers of its mobile subsidiary EE access to premium network BT Sport in time for the 2016/17 Premier League season. Pricing details were not announced.

Earlier this week, BT Sport was made available to TalkTalkTV subscribers.

BT crashed into the UK original content space last August when it secured exclusive distribution of AMC locally, meaning US cable hit Fear the Walking Dead would only be available to its subscribers.