The Connected Consumer: Could a BT/ITV deal still work?

Panel debate from the Business Models and Platforms session at MediaTel Group’s Connected Consumer conference yesterday.

“BT and ITV should have done a deal eight years ago, but it’s not too late. Both need each other. To succeed just as a platform is difficult.”

An interesting question posed from the audience during yesterday’s Business Models and Platforms session at MediaTel’s full-day conference, The Connected Consumer.

In response, Damien Read, BT Vision’s General Manager of Products and Propositions, spoke only of ITV as a partner. Indeed, the two companies have been talking recently. ITV has denied it is interested in airing any of BT’s Premier League matches, but has said that it may pitch for the contract to produce BT’s live football coverage – said to be worth in excess of £100m.

David Hellier, deputy editor of City AM was writing on MediaTel NewsLine yesterday about the sports rights deals BT Vision has done. His view was they did add up financially given the scale of the broadband network they would be protecting, and talking to us this morning, David commented: “I think BT could really benefit from buying ITV, at a good price, of course. It’s very difficult to take on BSkyB with its existing infrastructure in broadcasting. ITV would give BT much more clout.”

On yesterday’s panel, Damien spoke of the football deal showing the power of content. “Our ambition is to grow the base.”

Nigel Walley, MD of Decipher, commented that even though this was a broadband business, it “must put together a linear channel proposition to deliver a sports channel.”

Damien said that BT is also keen to make it easy for its audience to move from live to VOD.