ESPN Secures Carriage On Freeview And Bt Vision
ESPN has rounded out its carriage deals for its new UK channel, which boasts Barclays Premier League live matches, after agreeing distribution contracts with Freeview and BT Vision.
ESPN, which has picked up live rights to English and Scottish Premier League football for the coming season, will be carried on Top Up TV, Freeview’s pay-TV content platform.
To mark the August launch Top Up TV will offer subscribers to the new channel their first month free. ESPN will appear on channel 34 and, following the end of the introductory offer, will be available for £9.99 per month.
Recent Ofcom figures show that over 17m UK homes now are capable of receiving Freeview. Freeview consumers need a pay-TV compatible set-top box to access the matches provided by Top Up TV.
ESPN has also announced a deal with BT Vision, the telecoms company’s service that couples Freeview TV with broadband on-demand content and has a customer base of 433,000.
ESPN picked up the rights to top-flight English and Scottish football following the demise of previous broadcast partner Setanta which collapsed into administration earlier this year.
As well as its live football content, ESPN offers a wide-range of top flight German, Portuguese, Russian and Dutch football, UFC and a host of other international and US sports.
ESPN has already struck carriage deals with the Sky and Virgin Media pay-TV platforms.
