DISCA Discovery Inc

By Kyle Morris

BT Group PLC on Thursday laid out plans for the future of its television operations, including exclusive discussions to create a U.K. sports joint venture, as it reported weaker nine-month results.

The U.K. telecommunications company said it has entered into exclusive negotiations with Discovery Inc. to create a 50-50 sports joint venture in the U.K. that would bring together BT Sport with Eurosport UK.

The new business would remain committed to BT Sport's existing major sports broadcast rights and BT Sport customers would get access to Discovery's sport and entertainment content, including the discovery+ app, it said.

BT said it hopes to conclude exclusive discussions with Discovery early in the first quarter, with the new company operational later this year.

An agreement has also been reached in principle with Sky for a new longer-term reciprocal channel-supply deal to beyond 2030, it said.

"Today sees two important strategic partnership announcements on how BT moves forward in the fast-evolving content and TV business. The agreement in principle with Sky will provide our customers more choice and more flexibility for the next decade. Separately, we are excited at the prospect of a new joint venture between BT Sport and Eurosport UK as we enter into exclusive discussions with Discovery," Chief Executive Philip Jansen said.

The company also said revenue for the nine months to Dec. 31 was 15.68 billion pounds ($21.28 billion) compared with GBP16.06 billion a year earlier, while pretax profit was GBP1.54 billion compared with GBP1.59 billion a year earlier.

Adjusted revenue for fiscal 2022 is expected to decline by around 2% on year, as a result of the continuing effect of the pandemic and supply-chain issues. All other outlook metrics remain unchanged, it said.

"BT has had a good quarter with encouraging market share performance, and we continued to make significant improvements in customer service, although revenue from our enterprise divisions was softer than we expected," Mr. Jansen said.

Write to Kyle Morris at kyle.morris@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 03, 2022 03:15 ET (08:15 GMT)

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