BT says the offer of free Premier League football helped it win 93% of new broadband connections – 156,000 new users – in the three months to September 30th.
Announcing the firm’s latest results, CEO Gavin Patterson said 2 million viewers had now signed up for its BT Sport channels and that its wholesale deal with Virgin Media meant they were “available to around four million homes in total.”
In addition to the new broadband users, Mr Patterson credited BT Sport for helping the company achieve “our lowest line losses for five years and 4% revenue growth in our BT Retail Consumer business.”
Despite the higher gains and retentions, profits for the six months ending September were £948m – down 13% compared to the same period in 2012.
However BT stressed that across the group, revenue was down just 0.5% compared with a decline of 5.5% the previous year.
Patterson also revealed that BT’s Openreach division has now rolled out super fast fibre broadband to exchanges covering 17m premises and that “more than 2m homes and businesses” have upgraded from traditional copper services.
Of these, BT’s share of the retail fibre market stands at 1.7m, an increase of 195,000 including new connections and upgrades.
BT also added 70,000 TV customers, taking its total subscriber base to “over 900,000”.
In a statement Mr Patterson said: “BT Sport has made a confident start and is already delivering for viewers. More than two million of our customers are signed up to it and our wholesale contract with Virgin Media means it is available to around four million homes in total.
“It is also delivering for the business, helping us achieve a record 93% share4 of broadband net adds in the quarter, our lowest line losses for five years and 4% revenue growth in our BT Retail Consumer business.”