“We saw very good demand for BT Sport Europe, which launched in August”, its chief executive Gavin Patterson said.
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BT pulled in £4.38 billion in revenue which was up 2 per cent, and while EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) was down 1 per cent at £1.44 billion, the company noted that this was because of investment in BT Sport Europe.
Many of BT TV’s new customer addition can be attributed to the group winning the rights to the UEFA Champions League, as group stage matches began at the end of the quarter. Headline profits climbed 2 per cent to £706m, the flat results reflecting the start-up costs of the Champions League, which BT wrested from Sky with an £897m three-year bid.
BT has hired an extra 3,000 engineers over the last 18 months and added 1,000 people in call centres to meet targets for better customer service and fault fixing. “Its contribution has been better than we expected, helping drive a 7% increase in BT Consumer revenue”. Broadband and TV revenue was up 17 per cent and Openreach broadband revenue up two per cent, with growth in fibre broadband partly offset by regulatory price changes.
BT added that its mobile base now stands at 200,000 customers since it re-entered the market earlier in the year.
On Wednesday, the competition watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) provisionally approved BT’s £12.5 billion merger with mobile phone firm EE.
This new channel was one of the improvements to BT’s TV offering, alongside the recent launch of the AMC TV channel, which is also exclusive to BT, and the rollout of the BT TV Ultra HD package, it said.
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The company said its mobile services division also performed well.
