SportBusiness Media staff

French digital-terrestrial television channel L’Equipe 21 has acquired rights for a number of pre-season friendly matches featuring two football teams from the English Premier League.

Time Warner’s board has approved a measure to block a section of its shareholders from forcing a vote on a takeover bid from rival media company 21st Century Fox, which operates the Fox Sports channels.

Agcom, Italy’s communications regulator, has approved sublicensing deals between pay-television broadcaster Sky Italia and Mediaset Premium’s parent company RTI for coverage of domestic football’s top-tier Serie A.

Australian public-service broadcaster SBS is investigating claims that its exclusive rights to the Tour de France are being undermined by British coverage of the cycling showpiece being live-streamed into Australia.

US media company Comcast, the country’s largest cable-television operator, has agreed a carriage deal with sports broadcaster ESPN for the SEC Network, a new pay-television sports channel dedicated to college sport’s Southeastern Conference.

UK pay-television broadcaster BSkyB is to dedicate one of its Sky Sports channels to coverage of the 2014 Ryder Cup golf tournament.

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has won further support for his plan to establish an Olympic television channel and the project will undergo further development in the coming months.

Spanish public-service broadcaster TVE has acquired rights for the Spain national basketball team’s warm-up games ahead of the 2014 Fiba Basketball World Cup in the country.

The MP & Silva agency has curtailed its deal to distribute the domestic and global media rights for the Chinese Professional Baseball League, the top division in Chinese Taipei.

Digital-terrestrial operator StarTimes has launched a new sports channel, StarTimes Sport 2, in South Africa.