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TBS won the rights for three more years, from 2009 to 2011, but for the first time will share coverage with the Golf Network. It is thought TBS’s coverage will focus on the third and final rounds with the Golf Network covering the earlier rounds. The deals include coverage of the Senior PGA Championship.

The deal will be the second blow suffered by public-service broadcaster TVP, the incumbent rights-holder on both properties. TVP lost out in the Champions League auction last week after bidding went through three rounds. Polsat won the free-to-air rights for first-choice games on Wednesday and pay-operator ITI retained the pay-television rights for all matches.

The two broadcasters were the incumbent rights-holders for the latter stages of the Uefa Cup in deals worth about €4 million a season that expired this year.

Direct 8 fought off competition from pay-broadcaster Canal Plus, the incumbent broadcaster for Under-21 matches, France Télévisions-Eurosport and the Foot-National.com website.

Kirubi is leading a group of five investors keen to bid for the rights for English Premier League football and start a new Sub-Saharan operation using the existing GTV infrastructure, according to Kenyafootball.com.

GTV went bust in January this year after its owners opted against investing any further money into what was a heavily loss-making operation.

Sony, which is the only major pay-platform in India currently without a dedicated sports channel, has been considering a sports channel for some time. In addition to the rights for Twenty20 cricket’s India Premier League, which it shows on its Set Max general entertainment channel, it has the rights for international cricket in New Zealand and English FA Cup football.

The moves come ahead of the next international rights cycle of English football’s Premier League – fees for which were expected to grow exponentially – and after three years of explosive growth, culminating in a deal last year for Uefa Champions League and Europa League rights in Nigeria worth over $100 million over thee years.

The two networks are paying increases of about two per cent on their existing deals, which were to expire in 2011, in which CBS pays $622.5 million a year and Fox $712.5 million. The NFL was not due to begin renewal talks until next year.

Fox Sports chairman David Hill said that doing deals earlier was “a very smart move by the NFL”, given the economic downturn.

The 11 packages include: the free-to-air rights for one La Liga match a week; the pay-TV rights for one La Liga match a week; non-exclusive pay-TV rights for two La Liga matches a week; two free-to-air highlights packages; and three packages each for the national Cup competition the Copa del Rey and the Segunda Liga.

The deal is worth over SKr1.2 billion (€113 million/$154 million) over four years, from 2010-11 to 2013-14, a 50-per-cent increase on the existing deal. Competition from Modern Times Group’s Viasat, which last week announced the launch of a dedicated ice-hockey channel in Sweden, was the major factor behind the increase.

Cable operator RCS and commercial broadcaster Antena handed over a further €27 million to the Romanian football federation, covering the full-fee for the second-year of a three-year, €85 million deal.

Despite offering about $6 million ($2 million a year), twice the existing fee, One and Setanta were massively outbid after ESPN, in partnership with free-to-air broadcaster SBS, tabled $12 million, some four times what the two pay now. ESPN is thought to be paying the bulk of the fee.

The tender splits the rights down into 11 packages, including the free-to-air rights for one match a week, as required by law, pay-television rights and non-exclusive pay-per-view rights. Bids are due in on May 20.

The difference between reported and like-for-like growth is accounted for by the €33m impact of the full consolidation of the World Sport Group agency’s revenues at the start of the year. Lagardere acquired a 70-per-cent stake in WSG in the middle of last year.

Mediaset added an extra 400,000 active cards in the quarter, to reach 3.3 million at end-March. Mediaset Premium revenue now accounts for almost nine per cent of Mediaset’s Italian revenues.

Earlier, French clubs agreed to continue participating in the League Cup only on the basis that the competition no longer offers a Europa League place to the winner, a proposal that was accepted by the Ligue de Football Professionnel.

Poland is one of the biggest European markets where the rights for the 2009-10 to 2011-12 period have yet to be sold. Public-service broadcaster TVP and pay sports channel N Sports have the rights at present, paying a combined €6 million a year.

HiTV, which is the Premier League’s main broadcast partner at present in Nigeria, says that the consortium venture already has 18 partners and is looking for more. The consortium hopes to challenge the pan-regional dominance of the Naspers-owned Multichoice platform. Revenues from the new platform would be invested into local media and culture.