SportBusiness Staff

The EBU has quietly notched up several smaller victories this year

The loss of World Cup rights is a major blow for the Infront agency

FIFA surprised by what it thought was a cautious approach by bidding agencies.

Fifa has agreed or is in the process of agreeing deals for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups in the top five European television countries

Surprise close to FIFA bidding process

Horseracing:  UK commercial broadcaster Channel 4 signed a one-year deal to continue its horseracing coverage in 2006 after the horseracing and betting industries agreed to pay the channel £4.95m (€7.4m). 

Football:  Norwegian commercial channel TV2 an telecoms company Telenor acquired the rights to all Norwegian football in a record NKr1bn (£85m/€127m) deal (page 1)

Free-to-air television audiences for live coverage of Spanish football’s La Liga in 2004-05 fell six per cent on the previous season.

Spanish television’s near-black-out of the final of football’s domestic cup competition, the Copa del Rey, last weekend underlined a major flaw in Spanish listed-events legislation

Pay-television operators in four of the five top European television markets reported growing numbers of subscribers