Analysis

With China out of its post-pandemic lull and media rights deals expiring in all major markets this year, World Table Tennis is ready to roll out version 2.0 of its annual tour.

Pay-television broadcaster Sky Sports agreed to a flat fee to maintain its golf dominance in the UK market and retain rights to the Open Championship for another four years.

Pay-television broadcaster Foxtel agreed to a slight increase on its fee for Cricket South Africa rights over the next three seasons.
USA

The streaming platform that Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery will jointly launch later this year is, experts say, effectively a part-migration of the bundle from cable to streaming.

Mediapro faces a legal claim from Canadian Soccer Business amounting to C$250m ($186m/€172m) over the premature end to the agency’s 10-year contract for the production, broadcast and distribution of Canadian football.

It’s still two months until the Bundesliga plans to auction its domestic media rights, but the timing of the publication of the packages that will be on offer to the market provided for plenty of water-cooler talk at the annual SpoBis conference in Hamburg last week.
USA

Amazon’s proposed agreement with Diamond Sports Group to secure local streaming rights to US sports leagues has been hailed as a “brilliant, brilliant deal”, though approval of the plan is far from certain.

Mauro Balata, president of Italy’s second football division, Serie B, has called on football’s governing bodies to be more aware of the negative impact their constant expansion of competitions has on the value of domestic leagues.

South Korean media group CJ ENM has agreed to a three-fold increase in its fee to renew rights to the Australian Open for a further three years, from 2025 to 2027.

Sony Pictures Networks will pay around double its current fee to shore up its football portfolio with a renewal of Uefa club competition rights in the Indian subcontinent from 2024-25 to 2026-27.

Agency LiveMode has no plans to compete directly against Brazil’s established media companies for all-encompassing exclusive rights deals despite racking up a powerful audience base on streamer Cazé TV.
USA

The National Basketball Association’s next round of domestic rights deals seems certain to look very different to those of the last two decades, as streaming technology and changing user behaviour drive change in the US media market at an unprecedented pace.
USA

While maintaining its linear dominance, the NFL is increasingly focusing attention on NFL+, its direct-to-consumer streaming service which has just completed its second regular season.

Despite systemic weakness in the Pakistani economy, and chronic instability at the Pakistan Cricket Board, the Pakistan Super League T20 competition is on a sustainable path after securing strong increases in domestic media rights fees for the next two seasons.  

Amazon will show Wimbledon on Prime Video for the first time in any market after it stepped in to acquire rights in Germany and Austria when Sky exercised a break clause in its contract.

Formula E is banking on a close working relationship with motorsports experts Red Bull to fuel interest in the electric racing series in Germany and overturn what it hopes is a short-term drop in media rights fee in its biggest market.

The proposed merger between Disney Star and Reliance is being driven to a great extent by the wish to avoid a repeat of the 2023 IPL, in which the two entities undercut each other, resulting in reduced advertising revenues.

Amazon has found that premium sports properties drive acquisition of new customers to its Amazon Prime premium service but are not necessary for their retention.