Frank Dunne

Football

The new three-year deals, from 2022-23 to 2024-25, would replicate the current three-year deals, from 2019-20 to 2021-22. This includes the duration, the fee and the number of matches.
Multi-sport

The sports industry has paid tribute this week to Marco Bogarelli, who died of complications relating to the Covid-19 virus on Monday evening, aged 64
Basketball

The International Basketball Federation (Fiba) said this week that its two-year deal with Twitch is an “unscripted exercise” that carries risk but is a necessary experiment to reach younger fans.
Football

The collapse in December of the French football league’s media-rights deal with Mediapro is the biggest market setback suffered by a European league for nearly two decades – since the failure of the ITV Digital pay-television platform nearly bankrupted the English Football League in 2002.
Triathlon

Boosting the take-up of TriathlonLive, the direct-to-consumer OTT service operated jointly by the Infront agency and World Triathlon, is seen by experts as the agency’s best chance of increasing the margins on its global rights deal with the sport’s world governing body.
Multi-sport

Adding Eurosport’s content to a bundle of Discovery channels is the key to helping Discovery Communications build market share for its new subscription streaming platform discovery+ in an increasingly competitive OTT landscape, according to Andrew Georgiou, the president of Eurosport’s global sports rights and sports marketing solutions.
Football

Serie A’s carve out of important rights in its international rights invitation to tender for the 2021-24 cycle has surprised potential agency bidders. Agency sources say there is a premium attached to being the sole global distributor of a property, which is reflected in rights fees. This will be lost in the current process.
Hockey

Watch.Hockey, the direct-to-consumer OTT service recently launched by the International Hockey Federation (FIH), in collaboration with tech company Nagra, represents a new commercial model that could encourage more mid-tier sports properties to develop state-of-the-art D2C platforms.
Football

The Infront agency has called into question the value for sports bodies of entering partnerships with private equity companies, arguing that such deals result in a “loss of control”.
Multi-sport

Saudi Arabia’s confirmation that it will create a rights-acquisition and content platform under its Saudi Sports Company division had long been expected. What took some industry observers by surprise was the country’s apparent scaling back of its ambitions and the ostensibly softer tone used when outlining its acquisitions strategy.