BT Sport adds women’s tennis
January 11, 2013
BT Sport has signed a deal with the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) to show as much as 800 hours per year of live tennis featuring the best women players in the world, including the season-ending showpiece TEB BNP Paribas WTA Championships.
BT Sport will show live matches from 21 WTA tournaments across the globe, as World No.1 Victoria Azarenka battles with challengers, including Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters, to retain her top WTA ranking.
BT has chosen to invest in women’s tennis as it seeks to widen the appeal of its new sports channels, which will launch this summer.
This is our first women’s sport for the channels and we see a genuine opportunity to really develop the exposure for women’s sport with our new channels. We are focusing on several more women’s sports and we hope to be able to announce more rights soon,” said Simon Green, head of BT Sport.
In addition to its domestic rugby rights, BT is awaiting the outcome of a dispute between European Rugby Cup and Premiership Rugby over the future shape of European competition. It has also signed deals to show Italian, Brazilian, French and US football and is convinced all can be packaged and marketed more attractively than they are at present.