Introducing Watch Together - BT Sport's new innovation allowing viewers to watch live sport alongside their friends

The coronavirus pandemic may have made stadiums and pubs off-limits for football fans, but here at BT Sport we want to make sure you can still enjoy the Premier League with your mates.

With our brand-new Watch Together feature on the BT Sport app, you can watch live sport with your friends, wherever you are. 

At a time of social distancing and crowd-less sport, Watch Together provides you and your friends with the best matchday experience possible as lockdown continues into a second month.

Read on for everything you need to know about Watch Together, a game-changing project that's been years in the making at BT Sport.

What is Watch Together?

Watch Together is an exciting new innovation, allowing customers using the BT Sport app to watch, see and chat with friends in a split screen view while the match is being played. 

It's available on the BT Sport app on iOS and Android devices as well as Apple TV.

However at this stage it's NOT available on the large screen BT Sport app on Samsung smart TVs, Sony PlayStation, Xbox and NOW TV devices.

Watch Together is also not available BT TV, Sky, TalkTalk or Virgin Media.

How do I access it?

Firstly, make sure you've downloaded the latest version of the BT Sport app (iOS here and Android here)

Once viewers open one of our live streams on the BT Sport app, there will be an option to use Watch Together by hitting the icon in the top right of the screen. 

After that, customers can invite friends to join by clicking the blue icon in the bottom right of the screen.

Invites must be sent to fellow BT Sport subscribers and can be done so via email, Whatsapp or text message.  

Invited friends and family will then receive a link enabling them to join the same room.  

How many people can I invite to watch?

Watch Together allows four devices to view the same stream simultaneously.

That means you can invite a maximum of three friends to join your room.

All invitees must have a BT Sport subscription to join in the fun.

What programming can I use Watch Together with?

Watch Together is available on all BT Sport live events on BT Sport 1,2,3 & BT Sport ESPN.

That means whether it's Premier League, Gallagher Premiership, UFC or any of our other live broadcasts, you can watch it together.

Just make sure you are accessing the broadcast via the Channel section on the app and away you go. Note that Watch Together is not available while using the enhanced player.

Why is my picture speeding up or slowing down?

There's a good reason for this.

This may be because your stream is ahead or behind other streams in the room. 

We slow down or speed up your stream to get it into sync with everyone else. This can take up to 45 seconds but is usually faster than that.

I can see the Watch Together icon but it won't let me select it

This could be for a couple of reasons:

If our service has particularly heavy traffic or we’re experiencing technical issues we may prevent more people joining. We’ll be working on fixing it as quickly as possible so do try again later.

If your device or operating system is not supported by the feature (it’s a new innovation so some older devices and operating systems won’t work unfortunately - minimum Android version 6, iOS 10)

Why is the volume of the stream so low?

We provide two volume controls for both the video chat and the main stream.

However, on certain devices the stream volume drops lower than it should and it can’t always be turned back up. It’s something we’re working on fixing.

Please try with headphones if this happens as this can sort the issue in the short term.

Why is my camera picture the wrong way around?

Sometimes a camera won’t show you ‘upright’.

Ensure your auto-rotate is on in your device settings and turn the device between portrait and landscape a few times while in your Watch Together ‘room’. This should get you the right way up.

BT Sport is the home of live football, showing  at least 58 exclusively live Premier League games per season, plus every game in the Champions League and Europa League, selected FA Cup fixtures and much, much more.