BT is launching a new free to air channel that’ll bring at least 12 UEFA Champions League games to Freeview customers.
The BT Sport Showcase channel will launch later this year, ensuring that everyone, whether they can get pay TV or not, will be able to enjoy live coverage of British football teams taking part in both Champions League and Europa League games.
As well as showing the minimum 12 Champions League games throughout the 2015/16 season, BT Sport Showcase will also serve up 14 Europa League matches. Fixtures are still to be announced, but each participating British team will be shown at least once.
As well as football, BT says that nine Aviva Premiership rugby games will be broadcast on BT Sport Showcase and it hopes that other studio-based content will arrive on the channel.
Whether or not other content like MotoGP racing, WTA tennis and UFC mixed martial arts will also come to the channel remains to be seen – BT says that discussions with various rights holders need to be finalised before any more content can be greenlit for a free to air channel.
Likewise, channel numbers have yet to be announced for BT Sport Showcase, so we won’t know whereabouts it’ll land in people’s programme guides. We do know that the coverage will be in standard definition only, with no plans for BT to launch BT Sport Showcase HD.
BT today announced that its new BT Sport Europe channel, featuring live Champions League and Europa League fixtures, would be bundled in free with BT TV bundles, with other BT customers having to pay £5/month for access. As well as this, BT has unveiled a new 4K Ultra HD set-top box.
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