Good news for Liverpool fans: BT Sport and YouTube to stream Champions League and Europa League finals for free online
BT Sport will stream the Champions League and Europa League finals live on YouTube, allowing millions of fans not subscribed to the TV channel to watch the games for free.
The decision follows reports that Uefa is concerned with poor viewing figures for the first season of BT Sport's £897m deal which took European football away from terrestrial TV.
BT Sport said it was streaming the showpiece events as part of its promise to make televised sport "more accessible to more people".
Liverpool's first European final for nine years sees them take on Sevilla in the Europa League final next Wednesday, while local rivals Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid meet 10 days later in the Champions League final.
Read more: BT Sport and Ericsson team up for new Champions League channels
In 2013, the telecoms giant paid a record-breaking sum to end years of rights Champions League matches being shared by Sky Sports and ITV.
Uefa have reportedly been disappointed in BT Sport's audiences, although the broadcaster insists that it not the motivation for showing the games online for free.
“Both BT and Uefa are delighted with what we have achieved in our first year as the broadcaster of the Uefa Champions League and Uefa Europa League," said chief executive of BT consumer John Petter.
“The Manchester City semi-final second leg against Real Madrid had an audience peak of 1.7m and we were privileged to show what most people regard as one of the truly outstanding European matches when Liverpool came back to beat Borussia Dortmund 4-3 in the Europa League quarter finals. That game had an audience high of 1.6 million, which is fantastic."
For YouTube, this marks the first time either a Europa League or Champions League final has been shown live on its platform.
"At YouTube, we love football and we're thrilled to give UK supporters more ways to watch BT Sport's fantastic live coverage of these two massive games," said YouTube's senior director in EMEA.
"Fans today expect quality content on every screen and this partnership enables just that…Football is YouTube's biggest sport; we're host to ver 300 football clubs, 37 leagues and channels from BT Sport to Uefa."