Football: German public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF acquired the free-to-air rights for a further nine matches from next year’s Fifa World Cup in South Africa in a sublicensing deal with pay-broadcaster Sky Deutschland. Sky had last year sublicensed the rights for nine other matches to commercial broadcaster RTL and the latest deal sees it surrender any exclusive coverage it had from next year’s event. Sky said that it remains the only German broadcaster to show all 64 matches in high definition.
Football: Spanish commercial broadcaster Telecinco acquired the rights for the 2009 and 2010 Fifa Club World Cups, with a possible option to extend for the 2011 event.
Football: English football’s Premier League concluded deals across most of Europe for its next three-year cycle, from 2010-11 to 2012-13, bringing in record revenues of over €450m ($657m), at least 125 per cent more than in the present cycle. Deals were agreed directly with broadcasters in France and Poland (Canal Plus), Italy (Sky Italia), Germany (Sky Deutschland), Greece (Nova) and 365 Media (Iceland). The league also agreed a number of agency deals. Stockholm-based agency Medge Consulting won the rights in Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, AMI acquired the rights in 15 Eastern European and Central Asian territories, IMG won the rights in seven countries covering former Yugoslavia, the Important Media House agency won in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania and Saran Media retained the rights in Turkey.
Football: BSkyB, ESPN and Setanta acquired the live rights in Ireland for the Premier League in three-year deals from 2010-11 to 2012-13, paying a combined £90m (€99m/$146m).
Football: French commercial broadcaster TF1 acquired the rights for French national team matches from 2010-11 to 2013-14 in a four-year deal with the French Football Federation worth €45m ($66m) a year. The federation's Conseil Fédéral awarded the rights after several months of protracted negotiations. Commercial rival M6 and digital terrestrial channel Direct 8 also held talks with the Federation since it launched the sales process in June.
TF1 will pay an average of €4.1m per match, against €5m a match in the present deal. This will, in part, be compensated for by the fact that the federation will no longer pay the Sportfive agency a fee on the income for each match, since it now handles the sale of its rights in-house.
Football: UK pay-broadcaster ESPN acquired the rights formerly held by Setanta for English football’s FA Cup in a four-year deal with the English Football Association. The deal, worth £70m (€77m/$114m), runs from 2010-11 to 2013-14 and covers up to 25 FA Cup matches each season, including two matches from each of rounds one and two, three matches per round from rounds three to five, two quarter-finals, one semi-final and simulcast rights for the final. ESPN also has the rights for England Under 21 matches and a two-year deal for the first two seasons of the new Women’s Super League in 2011 and 2012.
Football: UK commercial broadcaster ITV acquired the rights for six additional FA Cup matches in the 2009-10 season in a deal with the English Football Association. ITV will pay about £2m (€2.2m/$3.2m) for one additional match from each of rounds three to five, two quarter-finals and one semi-final. It will also have exclusive coverage of the 2010 final.
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