Doesn't surprise me, I'd have watched it if I was at home.

What does surprise me is how many more customers BT has managed to coerce with the Champions League, especially when Plusnet is cheaper and offer the same channels. I can't remember if they have their own TV box though, or if you need satellite.

very good figure indeed surely even BT weren't expecting it that high.

Must be their highest figures for a cup replay by some distance.

Goes to show people will tune in and listen to Michael Owen

Telegraph article:

"BT Sport's dismal Champions League viewing figures raise concerns at Uefa"

"Inside Sport has learnt that free‑to-air coverage was forced upon BT by Uefa’s marketing agency, Team, which did not want the entire competition behind a paywall. One source claimed that the result had been a half-hearted approach to the Showcase channel, exemplified by an absence of first‑pick games that will continue in a last-16 line-up featuring no English teams."

"It is also understood that while Uefa is still content with a deal that more than doubled its UK broadcast income, it will insist upon changes to the existing model when it sells the rights to the 2018‑21 seasons. Whether that is demanding a better free-to-air offering or taking the entire competition behind a paywall remains to be seen.

Sponsors would certainly be unhappy with the status quo, according to Steve Martin, of M&C Saatchi Sport and Entertainment. He said: “The UK market is a massive market commercially and if one of your markets for the top five – England, Spain, Germany, France, Italy – is playing out to audiences as low as that, you’re going to question the value and you’re going to go straight to Uefa.”"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/foo...s-at-Uefa.html

Sounds like UEFA are admitting they made an almighty mistake allowing their flagship competition to end up on BT Sport. The money was nice as a short-term boost, but longer term it has devalued the Champions League - and nobody can argue with that. UEFA should have let BT have the Europe League for a price, their vastly smaller audience is well suited to the junior competition nobody really cares about. Champions League should have stayed with Sky who were making a massive commitment to coverage with Sky Sports 5 and broadcasting more European Football than ever before.

Put showcase also on freesat and sky to gain more viewers

Actually you don't need to. They already make the games that are on BT Showcase on Freeview free to air on BT Sport Europe etc. As a result the figures for BT Showcase are a little misleading as the games on that channel are going out on a different channel on Sky and Virgin, BT etc.

Even so there is a massive drop off between what games were peaking at and averaging on ITV compared to similar games on BT Sport (even if you combine BT Showcase and BT Sport Europe figures).

It's more the loss of ITV (rather than Sky) and the quality and limited nature of BT's FTA offerings that seems to be the concern - it will certainly perturb UEFA's sponsors who are suddenly reaching a much smaller market for their products.

It will be interesting to see how the next offer is structured as a result.

Surely it cant come as much of a shock this ?! BT Showcase was never going to come anywhere near the reach of ITV and so it's proving. So UEFA and sponsors marketing people must be useless if they didnt see this coming !

It beggars belief. It really wasn't difficult to work out what would happen.

Hopefully Sky & ITV will reclaim the rights when they are up for auction later this year.

And likewise no-one could have been surprised by BT barely promoting the channel and its CL offerings in order to get people to subscribe to its main channels.

Yep! I think that the coverage that BT are giving the tournament is very good, and they will surely fight tooth-and-nail to retain the rights, given the excellent results recently recorded by BT.

But we could perhaps expect to see one first-choice game per match day returning to ITV in the next contract? I don't think it would damage BT's offering too much and it would help the perception of the competition.

If you are referring to the BT Q3 results, the figures for BT consumer products all include Plusnet.

If UEFA were smart - they would have awarded the Europa League to Sky Sports after having awarded the CL to BT.

Sky would have pushed the hell out of the Europa league given the loss of the CL, as all BT can do now is admit that its second fiddle to the CL (which it obviously is, but UEFA arent keen on that message).

The FTA thing was just plain stupidity on UEFA's part letting BT have such a vague restriction on what goes FTA (and in SD).
The real damage is to come during the CL final - when surely so many will miss out.

But anyone who has freeview will be able to see it. I would imagine the ratings would beat any BT match before and, depending on English involvement, possibly go close to any Sky match.

UEFA are concerned by money and money alone. If BT continue to bid the highest amount then they will continue to keep the broadcast rights, however small the audience is compared to ITV.

Living in the shadow of Shooters Hill in SE London I only have Sky on my main set and no Freeview. On my second, smaller set in the kitchen I receive Freeview Lite from a relay in Thamesmead which does not have BT Showcase.

I have no wish to put an aerial on a 20ft pole pointing to Crystal Palace for one channel.

BT Sport Showcase isn't on Freeview Lite, so a decent number of homes can't receive it.

Freeview is available in 12m+ homes so its a rather glaring look at just how badly BT have been marketing their FTA offerings.
There should have been a clear direction from UEFA and those clueless fools at TEAM with regards to what needs to be FTA besides the final if FTA coverage was as important to them.
The lack of BT Sport Showcase other platforms including DSAT is also big but this has to be part owned by UEFA.

As for the immature comments above such as 'hoping ITV and Sky get the rights back...' just...stop!

BT's coverage has been nothing short of fantastic and has shows how poor both ITV & Sky were in terms of what they had to offer!
UEFA / TEAm need to sit down with BT and outline a few things but BT also needs to get Showcase properly promoted, on DSAT aswell or, come to an agreement with UEFA to sell a package of FTA rights to a broadcaster!

I mentioned this article to a colleague today who is a massive football fan and actually used to work for Leeds United's press team. He had no idea certain BT games were available free-to-air which says everything about how this coverage was promoted and the general lack of knowledge where this is concerned.

They don't seem to advertise single games coming up next week so on say on Sunday onwards on other channels they should be advertising next weekend premiere league game

Obviously you don't watch BT at all then or you'd see just how much BT advertise games on other BT channels.
We're talking about the lack of promotion outside of BT channels!!!!!

West Ham are well supported and a good team to watch too..

To attract a sizeable free-to-air audience for sponsors, Champions League coverage needs to be visible within the schedule/EPG of a mainstream free-to-air channel, on the viewers' platform of choice (all major platforms), in my view.

ITV were by far best placed to deliver this and I doubt that UEFA/its representatives were unaware that BT wouldn't/couldn't deliver free-to-air audiences remotely near to ITV when choosing to accept a huge increase in rights payments from BT.

Due to viewing behaviour, neither BT or Sky could deliver a free-to-air audience remotely close to ITV. If the Champions League isn't on ITV, then ITV are competing for audience against it!

If UEFA regard high free-to-air audiences to be more important than maximising rights revenue, then they'll only achieve this by not selling exclusively to a pay-tv provider again, and guaranteeing free-to-air coverage on one of the major free-to-air channels.

However, (per mlt11 earlier in the thread), UEFA have previously indicated that the revenue split was approximately 75% TV : 25% sponsorship.

So, in economic terms, tv revenues are significantly more important to UEFA than sponsorship.

In my view, UEFA's biggest concern will be seeking to maintain TV rights revenue at the level currently paid by BT and they may have to accept an exclusively "pay-tv" deal next time, to achieve that.

Yes spot on. UEFA are in a bit of a pickle when it comes to UK FTA providers of this type as it is essentially ITV or nobody (as BBC/C4/C5 likely have no interest).

The previous model worked well for all involved - and they IMO should have gone for a ITV + BT/Sky model, but as we all know....money talks.

The downside though is that it perhaps has made Sky realise how they can probably survive without the CL next time as well....which could have an impact on the next auction.

Sky will want the UCL back, absolutely no doubt in my mind on that

Of course they will want it back, but I am not sure they will be prepared to bid as much as they previously thought they would IMO.