Sky Sports is to offer Premier League clashes such as Manchester United v Southampton online for ?9.99 a day. Photograph: Jason Cairnduff/Action Images
BSkyB will for the first time allow customers to watch its sports channels on a pay-as-you go basis for ?9.99 a day, the first time it has ever allowed access to prime content such as Premier League football without a Sky TV subscription.
The move is a radical departure for the company, which has spent the last 20 years using prime sports such as Premier League football to convince viewers to sign up for monthly packages of at least ?42.50.
BSkyB is to offer sports fans the option of watching unlimited sports content from all six of its sports channels on its new internet TV service, Now TV, for a 24-hour period for ?9.99.
BSkyB aims to build the popularity of Now TV, which launched with Sky Movies content in July, which it revealed has attracted 25,000 subscribers in the three months to the end of December.
The new sports offering will launch in the spring and aims to attract fans looking to watch a one-off event, such as a Formula One grand prix, England cricket match or Masters golf.
BSkyB revealed the initiative as its traditional TV subscriber service contiinues to show minimal growth, just 25,000 new customers signed up in the three months to the end of December. BSkyB has 10.33m TV customers.
The company, which reported six-monthly pre-tax profits up 7.5% to ?642m to 31 December, beat most analyst expectations, adding 132,000 broadband customers in the quarter to 31 December.
Consensus City estimates put broadband sign-up numbers at closer to 117,000. BSkyB has 4.2m broadband customers.
The number of customers taking high definition TV rose 93,000 to 4.56m of its total customer base.
A third of BSkyB customers now take a "triple play" of three services such as TV, broadband and line rental.
Revenue rose 5% to ?3.5bn in the six months to the end of December, with Sky pushing its interim dividend up 20% year on year to 11p.
Average revenue per user, a key metric monitored by analysts, rose ?24 year on year to ?568. Churn rose slightly from 9.6% at 31 December 2011 to 10.3% at the end of last year.
More details soon ...
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/31/sky-sports-premier-league-online
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