Inside Lines: ITV coverage under threat as BT bid for Champions' League

ITV's continued coverage of the Champions League, the jewel in their meagre sporting crown – which they currently share with BSkyB – will be in danger when the bidding war for future rights begins this week.

New boys on the box, BT, plan to mount a serious challenge as a statement of intent to smash Sky's dominance of the football market. This follows their announcement that the BT Sport channel, only launched in August and fronted by Clare Balding and Jake Humphrey, already has two million subscribers, mainly as a result of a £246 million-a-season three-year deal to show 38 Premier League matches. BT believe millions more subscribers would be attracted if they can acquire Champions League fixtures.

Insiders confirm they will be pitching in with a "substantial" offer for the rights to broadcast the competition exclusively from 2015 to 2018 in the UK. Alternatively a sharing arrangement could be struck with Sky as with Premier League coverage.

Either way, any new deal with Uefa could blow the whistle on ITV's long association with the Champions League, which they have covered since its inception in 1992. Sky paid around £240m to show live coverage of the premier European tournament each week, with ITV's £160m giving the terrestrial channel first pick of Tuesday fixtures.

BT chief executive Gavin Patterson recently gave a strong hint of the network's intention: "This is a long-term strategy for us and you can expect us to do a lot more in the future."

It is also anticipated that next year BT will challenge Sky's boxing supremacy, linking up with Frank Warren's burgeoning BoxNation, whose ex-chief executive Simon Green is now BT's head of sport.

Colour blind spot

New sports minister Helen Grant, who is of mixed race, might consider having a quizzical word with her boss, Maria Miller at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

Last week Miller announced seven new Board members for Government-funded Sport England, a two-days-a-month commitment. These include the former Olympic hurdling champion, Sally Gunnell, England Rugby 2015 World Cup chief Debbie Jevans and her counterpart at British Cycling, Ian Drake. All merited – but like the others, all white.

In the light of recent events, we might have expected at least one member from the ethnic minorities to join Hanif Malik, a Leeds businessman and community leader who is the only non-white presence on the 11-strong board. It is not the first controversial selection – or rather non-selection – made recently by Miller, who is believed to have personally vetoed the appointment of Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, with whom she had a heated disagreement over disability benefits, as Sport England chair.

Similarly, over at UK Sport, not a single member of the present 10-person Board, also appointed by the Government, is from the ethnic community. Yet surely there is no shortage of street-cred candidates for either body. The FA's combative Heather Rabbatts and the consistently overlooked ex-world karate king Geoff Thompson, who runs the outstanding Youth Charter for Sport, spring to mind. But maybe, like Baroness Thompson, they are a tad too outspoken.

Commendably women are well represented on both boards, and there have been black members in the past. But as Grant might observe, the present situation seems rather remiss.

Ovett and out

Whoever gets to play stroppy Steve Ovett opposite Daniel Radcliffe's saintly Seb Coe in the forthcoming film about the pair's rivalry can expect no help getting in character from Ovett himself.

Now living in Australia, the reclusive Ovett, 58, apparently peeved at possibly being the bad guy, is refusing to co-operate with the film about their track confrontations, notably in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. It is called Gold, but given their dislike of each other, I suggest a better one might be Chariots of Ire.

a.hubbard@independent.co.uk