BT Sport maintains commitment to National League

UK pay-television broadcaster BT Sport has struck a three-season extension to its rights deal for the National League, the fifth tier of English club football.

Under the deal, BT Sport will retain exclusive rights to the National League across the 2018-19 to 2020-21 seasons.

BT Sport has been providing live coverage of the League since the broadcaster launched in August 2013.

The new deal will see typically one match broadcast live each match-week, normally in a regular Saturday slot. Each season, BT Sport’s coverage will follow the championship race and the end-of-season playoffs at Wembley Stadium, through which one team gains a second promotion place into the English Football League.

Additionally, the deal sees the continuation of an initiative first launched in 2016 through which media students from around the UK receive broadcast production training from BT and go on to help create BT Sport’s weekly Sunday night National League highlights show.