The first live Premier League football match shown exclusively by BT, the opening game between Liverpool and Stoke, was watched by a peak audience of 764,000 viewers, giving the new rivals to Sky a solid start. The match average was 629,000, although these figures from Barb do not include online or app viewers.
About half the households that watched the game used the rival cable TV platform owned by Virgin Media. The agreement could be very important in boosting viewer numbers but it doesn’t do much for BT’s objective of attracting broadband customers away from Virgin and BSkyB.
The first live Premier League football match shown exclusively by BT, the opening game between Liverpool and Stoke, was watched by a peak audience of 764,000 viewers, giving the new rivals to Sky a solid start. The match average was 629,000, although these figures from Barb do not include online or app viewers.
About half the households that watched the game used the rival cable TV platform owned by Virgin Media. The agreement could be very important in boosting viewer numbers but it doesn’t do much for BT’s objective of attracting broadband customers away from Virgin and BSkyB.
The figures are better than the 713,000 who watched ESPN’s opening game of last season between Newcastle and Tottenham, although less than the equivalent match shown by Sky last season between Swansea and West Ham which drew in 843,000 at its peak.
The extent of the gap between the two broadcasters is shown by the fact that Sky attracted a record 3.1m for its first Premier League fixture of the season, admittedly the attractive early evening kick off between Swansea and Manchester United.