Wimbledon gets strong uplift in new Sky Italia deal
Sky Italia is thought to have paid a significant increase to renew its rights to Wimbledon in a defensive move after losing the main package of Serie A rights to DAZN.
MLS bets the house on Apple ahead of crucial decade for US soccer
Will Apple prove the right partner to bring MLS to the masses? Frank Dunne takes a deep dive into a brave but necessary gamble.
CVC’s Ligue 1 deal confirms fund’s reputation as sport’s biggest gambler
Frank Dunne takes a close look at CVC, which has become the sport's industry's go-to private equity partner due to its aggressive investment strategy and appetite for risk.
Fifa launches free D2C OTT service with over 40,000 live matches per year
Fifa, world football’s governing body, today (Tuesday) launched a free, ad-funded streaming service which will carry over 40,000 live international and club matches per year, all Fifa archive content a…
Apple dips a toe with MLB but has plans for NFL cannonball
Apple’s first foray into sport may appear similar to Amazon’s low-cost experimentation, but the tech giant plans to accelerate into a wide-ranging premium sports strategy.
Bids, bailouts and plots form backdrop of Serie A’s YouTube experiment
Italy’s Serie A will continue to make its matches available for free on YouTube in the Middle East and North Africa for the remainder of the 2021-22 season, despite receiving bids from broadcasters in the region.
F1 leveraging Drive To Survive phenomenon across key renewals from 2023
Key media rights deals expire this year in the US, F1’s most important emerging market, as well as mature and lucrative markets such as Italy, Brazil, Asia-Pacific, South America and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Free-to-air channels make comeback as pay-television narrows its focus
European free-to-air broadcasters are very much back in the market for top sports rights and are becoming an increasingly attractive option for rights-holders.
Serie A picks up pieces as global media rights revenue falls 14 per cent
Though Italy’s Serie A was hamstrung by the country’s invasive regulators and by a broader bear market around the world, its own decisions have contributed to a dramatic shortfall in media rights revenue.
Middle East thaw resets market but glory days unlikely to return
Diplomatic processes put in place in 2021 to heal the rift between Saudi Arabia and Qatar have brought an end to the four-and-half-year dispute, sparking hope that the region’s sports broadcasting market will soon revert to normality.