BT Sport signs up over 2m customers as parent company sees 13 per cent decline in pre-tax profit
BT Sport has signed up over 2 million customers, BT has revealed within its second quarter figures, with pre-tax profit of £948m for the first half of its year so far.
The company has seen pre-tax profits fall by 13 per cent during the first half of the year, with a fall of 10 per cent during the second quarter to £499m, it has revealed, having spent millions to purchase the rights to sports broadcasts, including the Barclay's Premiership and Scottish Football, in order to compete with Sky Sports.
Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT, said that despite the profit fall, the results were “good.”
He continued: “This has been our strongest ever quarter for fibre take-up with Openreach net connections up 70 per cent. Our fibre network now passes more than 17 million premises. It is open to all and many other service providers have now got behind it.
“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 per cent share of broadband net adds in the quarter, our lowest line losses for five years and 4 per cent revenue growth in our BT Retail Consumer business.
“BT Retail’s Business division again saw good growth in IT services while BT Global Services and BT Wholesale both generated strong order books.”
He added that as CEO he was “determined to build on the strong foundations” already in place and said that it was “determined” to deliver its strategy with “energy and discipline.”