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At end-June, Digital Plus reported 1,784,843 subscribers, down 14,000 over the three months from March. A decline of 61,000 subscribers since January compares favourably with the 104,000 drop in the first six months of 2009. Dedicated football channel Canal Plus Liga has over 800,000 subscribers.

A new one-year deal would cover the European Championships in 2012. The EBU would also have preferred a longer deal but has not been prepared to meet the association’s fee demands, although the body last week said it has not been pushing for a “big increase” in rights fee.

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IMG acquired the rights, which cover the four seasons from 2010-11 to 2013-14, from the Buenos Aires-based agency Full Play, in a deal brokered by Muy Manero, the company set up by IMG’s former head of football, Fulco Van Kooperen. Full Play had acquired the rights from the Torneos y Competencias (TyC) agency.

In Spain, 13.4 million watched on free-to-air channel Telecinco, a 78.1-per-cent audience share. Telecinco’s coverage peaked at 15. 72 million viewers and an 85.5-per-cent audience share. The 30 minutes of extra time drew Spain’s highest television audience ever, with 15.605 million (an 85.9-per-cent share) watching across Telecinco and the pay-television channels of broadcaster Sogecable.

The site had its greatest reach in Brazil, where seven per cent of the online population used it. The UK was close behind on 6.9 per cent. Brazilian users spent the longest on the site on average, at 27 minutes across the month. In Germany, the site had more female users than male users.

Uefa, European football’s governing body, is blocked from offering the rights to pay-television broadcasters as the whole event is covered by listed events legislation.

Uefa wants an increase on the £52 million paid jointly by the BBC and ITV for Euro 2008, in a deal brokered by the Sportfive agency. The federation is selling the rights itself this time.

The league is offering non-exclusive packages of rights for mobile phones and the internet, as well as late-night television highlights, and radio highlights, for local and national stations for the next two seasons, 2010-2011 to 2011-2012.

The new channels will sit alongside the existing Ten Sports, which will remain a flagship brand, and Zee Sports, which is set to be rebranded as Ten Action, with a focus on football. Zee will have greater freedom to price the new channels to pay-television subscribers. The pricing of the existing channels is restricted by a ruling from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

Speaking exclusively to TV Sports Markets, Christian Seifert, chief executive of the Deutsche Fussball Liga, said that the weak German pay-television market was the single greatest challenge facing the league.

Richard was talking at the unveiling of the company’s new five-year strategy, called Conquests 2015, on Monday.

Commercial broadcaster Skai has already said that it wants to pull out of its deal with the Superleague, the top-tier domestic football league. European football’s governing body, Uefa, has also earlier rejected a plea from Greece’s Champions League and Europa League broadcasters to renegotiate their existing contracts. Other rights-holders have also received similar requests.

The audience was just short of the 8.51 million that watched Holland v Portugal in the Euro 2004 semi-final.

The Danish Kulturministeriet (Ministry of Culture) and the Sports Confederation of Denmark, an umbrella organisation for the country’s sports federations, will conduct the investigation. Broadcasters and sports federations will be involved. The investigation is to begin after the summer.

Both sides currently claim ownership of the rights to La Liga as the result of different interpretations of a revised Madrid court ruling last week. The ruling suspended an earlier sentence, requiring Mediapro to pay €105 million in damages to Sogecable and return all football contracts, following Mediapro’s application for voluntary insolvency proceedings.

Speaking to Sevilla’s in-house television channel, del Nido warned that the league could break apart unless the big two clubs were willing to share their revenues. He said that La Liga clubs would “impose rules on the big two and, if they don’t accept them, we will have a league with 18 teams and they will have a magnificent league with two.

There were 1.5 million users of audio and video, Mosey noted. The numbers were driven by the England-Slovenia World Cup game, where 800,000 people connected to live streams at the same time, up 55 per cent from the previous best of 360,000.

Investigators are studying the use of the short ads in 25 matches across the Uefa Champions League, Europa League and the Coppa Italia, the Italian cup, during the 2009-2010 season. The finance police have passed their findings to the country’s communications authority, l’Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni, which is responsible for monitoring television advertising.

A further 796,000 watched the game on pay-television, with 400,000 watching on Sogecable’s dedicated football channel, Canal Plus Liga, and 396,000 on flagship channel Canal Plus. The combined audience across the three channels peaked at 16.567 million, an 82.1-per-cent audience share.