Clare Balding, Boris Johnson, Michael Owen and Jake Humphrey during a tour of the BT studios at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London. Photograph: C1 Photography/PABT Sport, launched on Thursday night by its parent company in a bold £1bn bid to take on Sky Sports, will hope that it is not an inauspicious sign that one of its heavily trailed "ambassadors" might be about to trade the Premier League for La Liga. While Gareth Bale, one of several high-profile names signed to promote three new sport channels that will launch with a special 6pm show anchored by Jake Humphrey and featuring many of its on-screen names, ponders his future the broadcaster is nervously awaiting viewer reaction to its own gamble.
BT has invested well over £1bn in its new channel already, including a £738m deal for 38 Premier League matches a season and a lavish new state-of-the-art studio on the Olympic Park, and hopes to succeed where ITV Digital, Setanta and ESPN have failed, in taking on Sky.
It believes it is already reaping the rewards – more than 500,000 customers have signed new 12-month BT Broadband contracts to receive the channel free or paid the requisite £12 a month to sign up. But Sky, which has built its business on the back of Premier League football and other live sports, chose Wednesday to talk up its new schedule and technological advances at its own shiny new £330m studio complex in west London.
It will show 116 matches a season and claims its new schedule, which features a radically overhauled audience-based show that runs throughout the day on Saturday and a revamped Monday Night Football featuring Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher, will keep it ahead of the competition.
Marc Watson, chief executive of BT TV, said the new channel's output should not be judged on the first day alone, when it will be broadcast free for anyone with Freeview, TV from BT or Sky, but admitted it was a crucial moment for the company. "It is a big day for the company. We take a long-term view of this. Perceptions of the company are changing, they have been changing for a while and BT Sport has accelerated that."
In a bid to overshadow BT's launch Sky are going live to all 92 clubs on Thursday. The Sky Sports News executive editor Andy Cairns said the aim was to capture a snapshot of English football on the eve of the Football League kick-off.
The two rivals have been locked in a bitter war of words since the fixtures were carved up, with Sky insisting that in contrast to BT's marketing rhetoric the newcomer's line up is "no game-changer". In response, BT Retail's chief executive Gavin Patterson has called Sky's presentational style "cold" and promised a warmer, more-inclusive style with more family appeal.
The hiring of Humphrey, Clare Balding and Danny Baker is part of that strategy, as is the development of the biggest purpose-built sports studio in Europe to play host to hours of live programming that it hopes will differentiate it from Sky. BT also has the rights to Premiership rugby, WTA Tour tennis, the FA Cup and a host of overseas football leagues. But not, ironically, the possible destination of its big-name ambassador Bale – La Liga will remain on Sky.
"We'll still be broadcasting on Friday. Of course people will look at the first night, but we're in this for the long term. We have a vision for what the channel is going to be. What we all hope here is that we'll get a decent start tomorrow night. We also hope we'll get more than one day," said Watson, talking up pre-season fare involving Liverpool and Manchester United, as well as a tournament involving Laura Robson in its first week.
"We'll look back later in the year and take a view on how well we've done. We've done an enormous amount very quickly and we've worked incredibly hard to do that. We're ready to go. The studio is working and operating. We've got all the right people. I'm not sure there's anything we'd want to do that we haven't."
At Sky, its head of football, Gary Hughes, promised a range of innovations for the coming season and said its 21 years of experience in covering Premier League football would tell. "A new system that was tested last season will record every movement of every player and will provide new options for graphics and data, while another will give Neville and other pundits the opportunity to analyse the action during a match rather than after it."
The broadcaster is also making much of its on-the-go services, with the head of digital media, Dave Gibbs, trumpeting the 250,000 viewers who watched Manchester United play Real Madrid on smartphones and tablets via Sky Go last season as evidence of a significant shift in viewing habits.
A new iPad app designed to accompany viewing on the big screen, Sky 360, will effectively give viewers access to the same tools as those used by Neville, Carragher and Jamie Redknapp in the studio during a live match.
Increasingly, Sky is pointing to its technology and the breadth and depth of its companion offerings such as Sky Sports News, as well as its stable of rights, in order to convince its customers that their substantial monthly outlays remain good value. The head of presentation and production, Steve Smith, said it remains committed to 3D broadcasts, despite the BBC recently jettisoning its plans for the technology.
Behind the verbal jousting and the on-screen stardust lies a bitter battle for broadband, television and phone customers between the two companies. There is an ongoing duel over whether Sky should offer its channels to BT's YouView service, while BT has yet to agree a deal with the cable operator Virgin Media to broadcast its channels.
Watson took aim at Sky's distribution tactics: "We do still think it's odd that the monopoly player in the market has no obligation to provide their product. You don't have Tesco going out and buying up all the milk and saying no one else can have it."
Rights holders, meanwhile, will be hoping that the increasingly bitter battle between the two broadcasters translates to more competition.
While Sky has tied up many of its rights until the end of the decade, there will be Uefa Champions League and International Cricket Council rights on the market before long. "When rights holders bring things to market, we'll take a look and see if it makes sense. If they do, you can expect us to take a view," says Watson.
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