BT Sport versus Sky: The battle for football fans

As BT Sport signs up 500,000 customers to watch its Premier League games, we reveal bargain deals from both firms.

When it comes to the war for broadband, TV and landline customers, you don't get much bigger than the battle between BT and BSkyB.

BT v Sky: A bitter battle

Until the landline market was opened up to competition in the Eighties, BT was the UK's monopoly supplier of telecommunications. Even after three decades of fighting off rivals, the privatised business still has over 18 million domestic customers.

Compared to the long-established BT, BSkyB (trading as Sky) is a young upstart. However, when it comes to pay-TV, Sky is a colossus, due to its utter dominance of televised sport. Thanks to its tight grip on live football, Rupert Murdoch's UK broadcaster now has over 10.4 million customers.

However, BT is now fighting back by challenging Sky in its own back yard: the market for football fans willing to pay sizeable sums each month to watch live soccer matches.

BT Sport signs up 500,000

In a huge gamble aimed at luring customers away from Sky, BT earlier this year splashed out £738 million on buying three years of Premier League TV rights.

This gives BT Sport the right to screen 38 live Premier League games each season from 2013/14 to 2015/16. BT has also bought rights to show other sports live, such as all 69 Aviva Premiership rugby matches.

BT Sport channels go live this week on Thursday, 1st August, so let's find out how they stand up against the mighty Sky:

* All TV customers (including sports subscribers)

At first glance, signing up half a million customers even before launch seems like a triumph for BT Sport. However, BT admits that the majority of these new subscribers are existing BT broadband customers given the new sports channels for free.

BT Sport's early success in recruiting subscribers is largely down to the fact that it gives its sports channels free to renewing (and new) broadband customers. By giving away live Premier League games for free, BT hopes to drive up its broadband base. BT is currently the market leader in UK broadband, with around 6.8 million customers, versus 4.3 million for Sky.

In its latest financial results, released earlier this week, that BT revealed that it had lured just 23,000 new subscribers to its pay-TV service in the three months ending 30th June. Overall, this takes BT's TV audience to 833,000 households -- a mere 8% of Sky's audience.

What will be interesting is how many more subscribers BT Sport actually attracts before the Premier League season kicks off on Saturday 17th August.

BT versus Sky: Their best deals right now

Obviously, customers choosing a new pay-TV service have price at the front of their minds, as monthly fees can range from below £20 to above £60. The good news is that aggressive competition between BT, Sky and other providers means that prospective customers are constantly bombarded with special offers, discounts and freebies aimed at encouraging them to sign up, ditch and switch.

These are two most attractive packages on offer from BT and Sky today:

As you can see, both packages bundle TV, broadband and landline (known as 'triple play') for a discounted monthly fee. Sky's offer comes with no upfront costs, but BT charges £49 for installation. Both contracts run for a minimum of a year and are open only to new TV customers. BT bungs customers a £60 Sainsbury’s gift card, while Sky's freebie is a £25 M&S e-voucher for use online.

By and large, these deals are broadly similar, but BT wins for me because of its ultra-low monthly of fee of a mere £20 for the whole of the first year. In contrast, Sky's monthly fee starts off at £21.75 for six months, but then doubles to £43.50 for the next six months (and leaps again to £51 a month after the first year).

On the other hand, you do get a much wider range of TV channels with Sky than with BT.

Who will win: BT or Sky?

It remains to be seen whether BT can take on Sky and win on Sky's home turf. After all, rival firms have tried to take on Sky before and lost. ITV Digital, Setanta and ESPN all lost their battles against Sky, with the first two businesses going bust and ESPN pulling out of screening Premier League games, nursing heavy losses.

Then again, BT has a far bigger balance sheet and more financial firepower than these three previous losers put together. Thus, if anyone can take on Sky and win, then BT would probably be the best bet.

As for consumers, what's clear is that BT Sport's entry into live football throws up opportunities for us to find much better deals to suit our household budgets, so don't hesitate to ditch and switch today!

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