Following the news that BT is in talks to sell its BT Sport arm, Conrad Wiacek, Head of Sport Analysis at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on the state of the media market:

“With BT looking to sell BT Sport, with the likes of Amazon, DAZN and Disney likely to be interested in premium sporting rights that are under contract to BT Sport, it seems that another contender has fallen by the wayside when challenging Sky’s domestic hegemony.

“BT launched its sport platform with the prospect of driving interest in its broadband offering and followed the model of rival Sky by purchasing a significant amount of soccer content, with Premier League and Champions League rights being snapped up. BT Sport pays £975m for 52 Premier League matches per season and £1.1bn a season for exclusive Champions League rights.

“While sport is still appointment viewing, as evidenced by massive rights renewals for the NFL in the US where rights have just sold for $100bn over ten years, BT pulling out of the premium sports rights market and the Premier League not taking its next rights deal to tender, the media rights market is on course for a market correction that is long overdue.”