Almost 1m smartphone and tablet users have downloaded the BT Sport app, the channel’s boss announced today.
Marc Watson, CEO of BT TV, said the app’s popularity matched the growing trend of watching TV online and predicted the firm’s fibre broadband services would become an increasingly be an important platform for television.
Watson used a speech at the Royal Television Society to re-affirm that the BT Sport channels were about driving uptake for its broadband products,
He told delegates: “We are proud as punch of our channels – and the team who have delivered them in an amazingly short timeframe – but they are there first and foremost to entice new customers to take our broadband and to encourage existing customers to stay with BT.
“Some people think we are trying to win TV customers off Sky but the truth is far more nuanced. There is lots of room for both Sky and BT in the TV space but we are rubbing elbows in the broadband market.”
Responding to recent media coverage of the channels’ viewing figures, Watson pointed out that the figures reported by BARB exclude viewers watching via the app.
He said that although three million satellite, BT TV and Virgin Media households have access to the channels on their TV, “hundreds of thousands of homes that have chosen to watch BT Sport exclusively online.”