OREANDA-NEWS. February 12, 2015. Sky led Britain's top share index lower on Wednesday after paying a record sum to secure TV rights for top English soccer games and fierce rival BT, which pushed Sky into paying a premium for the content, rose 4 percent.

Shares in Sky fell 5 percent after agreeing to pay 4.2 billion pounds to show 126 live Premier League matches a season between 2016 to 2019, far outstripping forecasts. BT secured 42 games a season for 960 million.

Sky said it would pay by cutting costs and raising prices.

"While arguably this should mean unchanged consensus numbers ... some investors are likely to de-rate the shares because of increased uncertainty around future content renewals and reduced future flexibility on costs," Barclays analysts said in a note.

By 0827 GMT, Britain blue-chip share index was down 7.07 points, or 0.1 percent, at 6,822.05, still up about 4 percent on the year.

Africa-focused oil and gas explorer Tullow Oil fell 3.2 percent after reporting a \\$2 billion pre-tax loss, its first in 15 years.

Tullow also scrapped its final dividend payment in the face of a slump in the price of oil.

Among the top gainers, ARM rose 4.6 percent after the British chip designer posted a 25-percent rise in fourth-quarter profit, ahead of expectations, helped by a strong year end in companies licensing its technology and rising royalty revenues from customers such as Apple.

Another standout gainer was Reckitt Benckiser Group, whose shares rose 4.3 percent after the British consumer goods maker said it was launching a new cost-savings programme, noting that 2015 would be similar to last year.

Outside the blue-chips, British data centre provider Telecity Group rose 16.7 percent after it said it had reached a non-binding, all-share merger agreement with New York-listed Interxion to help both tap growing client demand to use "cloud" technology.