BT Vision to challenge Sky's grip on live football

BT Group made its most serious attempt yet to break into the television market yesterday with the launch of BT Vision Sport, a package offering live Premier League football action it claimed would be the breakthrough application for its multimedia services.

For £12 a month, subscribers will get access to the 46 live matches being shown by Setanta Sports this season, as well as 60 matches from the Scottish Premier League. The price also includes 242 "near live" Premiership matches, plus 125 Coca-Cola League and Carling Cup games.

Marc Watson, the commercial director at BT Vision, said the company was not necessarily targeting the customer base of Sky, which until the end of last season held a monopoly on live Premiership football. "We believe we are offering something different," he said.

In particular, BT's pitch is that many customers balk at paying £34 a month for Sky's Sports channels because they are only interested in watching the teams they support. In particular, BT believes fans of the smaller Premiership clubs, which are featured less often on Sky, may see its deal as better value.

However, while Vision Sport offers a significant saving compared to Sky Sports, customers will have to be signed up to BT's £17.99 a month broadband internet package to access the service. In addition, BT charges a £30 connection fee for the service, plus £60 for an engineer to install the equipment needed.

BT Vision, a key part of the telecoms company's strategy to transform itself into a serious multimedia player was launched last year and has 20,000 households connected. BT said yesterday it was making about 2,500 installations a week, but expected the number to increase significantly after the launch of Vision Sport.

The service relies on a set-top box that takes a signal from a household's BT Broadband connection. About 3.7 million people have so far signed up to BT Broadband.

Despite BT's insistence that it was not targeting Sky, the television company, which still has the rights to significantly more Premiership football action than Setanta, is keen to counter the threat. It launched its own broadband services this year, which include a free connection for its television subscribers, plus free phone calls in the weekend and evenings.

A Sky spokesman said: "We're confident that customers are smart enough to find the real value in this competitive marketplace."