Ian Livingston, the outgoing Chief Executive of BT, has revealed that the telco’s forthcoming BT Sport service has already attracted over 500,000 customers prior to its August 1st launch.

Commenting on BT’s Q1 results, Livingston said: “It is early days but we are very pleased with the strong start in BT Sport. More than half a million households have now ordered BT Sport and that’s before the channels have even launched.”

By offering BT Sport for free with BT broadband, BT hopes to appeal to the vast majority of UK homes – more than 20 million – who already have broadband as well as those who haven’t taken it to date. More than five million homes already take their broadband from BT and whilst the company will be rewarding those loyal customers with the free service, it will also be encouraging customers of other ISPs to switch supplier.

For the quarter up to June 30, BT reported TV net additions were 23,000, taking the customer base to 833,000.

Most of the 500,000 BT Sport customers are existing customers who have re-contracted their broadband service. “We expect the proportion of new customers to increase after we launch the channels on 1 August,” said the company.

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