BT Sport: Positive start to the season

For almost 20 years Sky Sports has maintained the ownership of sport viewers, but could this be the season that the ownership is contested? BT Sport's first televised Premier League football match at the weekend, Liverpool versus Stoke City, attracted a peak audience of 764,000 viewers, beating ESPN's opening game last season.

Although the audience figure is far less than Sky Sports 3.1 million viewers, Sky Sports first game last season only raked in 843,000; BT Sport should be considered as serious competition!

In a recent press release BT Sport claims to have acquired 1 million subscribers due to the new sports package offering, indicating that 76% of all subscribers tuned into the game - pretty impressive! That being said, the cost per acquisition is still painful given the £100m+ marketing campaign.

We've been following the campaign since the first day it was executed, commenting on the different creatives, messaging and tactic's used by both brands and early signs appear to be positive for BT Sport. But, there's still a long way to go before seeing a positive ROI.

We have a feeling this will go the full 12 rounds!

#PurePoint

Round 6!

So, it’s time for it to end. Finally.

The posturing, the bad-natured bravado, the poorly disguised dislike and the testosterone-fuelled, territorial circling has swamped our daily lives for the past couple of months.

The ink used in the print ads would have filled the Great Lakes. They’ve had more TV time than Lord Sugar. They’ve even spent more than the entire Premier League combined (yes, including Manchester City)

The two behemoths of British sports broadcasting, Sky Sports and BT Sport, have been obsessed with the quest to become the one that has eaten a bigger slice of the Premiership Pie.

As we have documented, despite the initially considered nature of the rivalry, the contest has descended in to a bare-knuckle brawl. Targeted placements have given way to ubiquity and refreshing messaging has devolved into tale-telling and seemingly contradictory claims.

The season starts tomorrow.

In a final, desperate lunge that reeks of burnt rate cards and smashed sales targets, BT Sport have literally blanketed today's media, with Sky Sports remaining comparatively calm. We've included the examples at the end of the blog - you've no doubt seen them several hundred times in the last two months!

We shall have to see whether the Evening Standard is equally as battered by this crusade (campaign doesn’t seem to do it justice).

The biggest test will be the figures that are recorded over the next few weeks.

Let the chips fall as they may.

All we know is, we’re finally glad that there will be a little more content on the tellybox.

It’s time for it to end. Hopefully….

Let the games begin.

#PurePoint

BT Sport and SKY Sports: Round 4

The plot thickens; wires are crossed in the form of mixed messages, BT and SKY Sports competitors become allies and then competitors again in the same day. At the same time Virgin Media is dragged into the ongoing sports-package rivalry bout...WHAT IS GOING ON?!

Round 1: The battle for TV sports customers started on May 9th when BT Sport launched a £100m+ campaign, executing 1,132 press ads within 33 days.

Round 2: SKY Sports then hit back with a series of direct competition ads and big budgets to boot.

Round 3: David Beckham is brought in as the trump card to endorse SKY Sports.

Now, we're into round 4 and the ad battle has escalated to the point of confusion. SKY has fired a broadside across the BT's bows, by guaranteeing the best price for both packages, whereas BT has countered stating you can only get BT Sport through BT:

Who to believe?!

Furthermore, Virgin Media and ESPN have unwillingly been thrown into the ring too with another message contradictory to that of the previous SKY Sports ad:

Very confusing for potential customers and it seems the only beneficiaries are the media owners.

At least SKY and BT can't be criticised for rolling out the same creative throughout the whole campaign. 

Lets see what happens next!

#PurePoint