For Broadcast July 14, 2008

BT Vision has tied up an exclusive deal with the Scottish Premier League for 28 near-live Saturday games next season.

The IPTV platform has contracted directly with the Scottish Premier League for the games and will act as the games' broadcaster itself rather than using a partner such as Setanta.

BT Vision is poised to announce the indie that will produce the coverage in the next two weeks.

The games will be offered late on match days to BT Vision customers who subscribe to at least a £14 per month pay TV package.

The SPL games are part of a broader re-pricing and re-bundling of programming by BT Vision that introduces three new bundles – bronze, silver and gold - for £14, £18 and £20 per month respectively.

Under the new bundles, subscribers to any of the three packages will receive the Setanta Sports 1, a bundle of live sports including games 46 live Barclays Premiere League games, The FA Cup and PGA Tour Golf as well as England World Cup qualifier matches and England friendlies in addition to the 60 Clydesdale Bank Premier League games.

"With this deal BT Vision will offer more football than any other UK broadcaster," said BT Vision chief executive Dan Marks.

The new packages are a response to some 68% of BT Vision's 250,000 customers in mid-May taking some sort of pay TV subscription package.

BT Vision will report new customer numbers on July 28 as part of BT's results but if subscriptions have continued at the same pace as in the first quarter the new customer numbers should be in the region of 280,000.