London, England - April 27, 2006 - Premiership football could be blacked out from half of UK homes if NTL/Virgin restricts games to its cable network, according to the latest report from Strategy Analytics' Broadband Media and Communications service. NTL's cable network only passes half the UK population, so it would have to use other technologies, such as digital terrestrial television (DTT) or ADSL, to increase viewer numbers.

"NTL's dilemma is that it wants to add subscribers to its cable network, but the network only reaches half the population," says David Mercer, Principal Analyst at Strategy Analytics. "Football authorities are unlikely to approve of a service with such limited reach, so NTL will have to invest in other technologies to reach the remaining viewers."

Even if NTL used DTT and ADSL, a minority of homes would be unable to receive the service. NTL may end up having to use Sky's digital satellite platform to distribute a sports channel. While NTL would recoup pay TV income from this channel, it would mean that Sky customers would not have to subscribe to a cable service to watch football games.