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Indonesian rights-holder ESPN Star Sports is in the middle of a tender process offering non-exclusive Premier League rights for the upcoming season, with pay-operators Telkomvision and Aora TV both reportedly interested.

Ten said that in addition to increasing its capacity from seven channels to 10, the move will also improve picture quality. Peter Hutton, Ten’s chief operating officer, said “We are looking at options for both expanding our own operation and to producing more channels for third parties to use this extra capacity”.

Sky Italia is understood to be paying €580 million each season for the ‘Platinum’ package, covering live satellite rights for all 380 Serie A matches each season. The Lega and its adviser, the Infront Sports & Media agency, had asked for €570 million for 2010-11 and €578 million for 2011-12.

A deal with satellite pay-platform Sky Digital will probably now see ESPN and ESPN America offered together as part of an ESPN mini-package for the same price as proposed for ESPN’s initial single-channel offer - £12 a month for stand alone subscribers or £9 a month for existing Sky Sports subscribers.

Speaking exclusively to TV Sports Markets, after launching the tender process for Serie A rights for the seasons 2010-2011 and 2011-2012, the league’s director general, Marco Brunelli, said: "This is the first time since Sky Italia and Mediaset Premium launched that there can be a genuine partnership between the league and its broadcasters, the kind of partnership you find in other European leag

Coverage of Sunday’s Alps mountain stage from Pontarlier to Verbier drew an average of 5 million, peaking at 7 million viewers when Spanish rider Alberto Contador crossed the finish line to claim the yellow jersey. The two previous stages on Friday and Saturday (Vittel-Colmar, Colmar-Besançon) both drew an average of 4.1 million.

The channel will have the rights for domestic league football as well as coverage of the European leagues. It has acquired the exclusive rights for Spain’s La Liga for the next three years and has agreed to sublicense matches from Germany’s Bundesliga and the English Premier League from pan-European broadcaster Eurosport.

ESS has created the competition as an innovative way to draw new sponsors and advertisers at a time when market conditions have been affected by the downturn. To enter, media agencies and advertisers must pledge $50,000 in advertising spend around one of ESS’s channels in the next year and outline a proposal as to how they will use the FA Cup sponsorship to drive their brand.

The deal follows an alliance between the Asian Tour and the European Tour to form a joint-venture company – EurAsia Golf Limited – that will oversee all business relating to co-sanctioned Asian and European Tour events, including promotion, sponsorship and television.

The Pitch-Kentaro joint offer beat bids from present incumbent IMG and MP&Silva for the rights for the three seasons from 2010-11 to 2012-13.

The small number raises questions over the Bundesliga’s effectiveness as a lure to attract new subscribers and over Deutsche Telekom’s wisdom in acquiring the rights again in a new four-year period starting next season.

The channel’s raison d’être is to provide additional live coverage of the big championships of Olympic sports. This weekend it will show coverage of the swimming world championships and next month it will show additional coverage of the athletics World Championships in Berlin.

Prasar Bharati’s net revenue for 2008-09 was Rs9.46 billion ($195 million), down from Rs9.58 billion in 2007-08 and around Rs 10 billion in 2005-06. Revenues from sports coverage on television arm Doordarshan accounted for less than six per cent of its overall 2008-09 revenue, a government source told the Business Standard newspaper, compared with nearly 40 per cent four years ago.

France Telecom-owned Orange had won a court appeal in May that gave it the right to offer its Orange Sport and Orange Cinema Series channels exclusively to subscribers to its internet and telephone services. Orange has a four-year deal from 2008-09 to 2011-12 for the rights for Saturday night Ligue 1 games, which are shown exclusively on its Orange Sport channel.

ESPN has picked up the rights for the same matches it has already acquired in the UK. Setanta’s rights for 33 Saturday afternoon 3pm matches are also back on the market. Setanta had agreed a three-year deal for 79 Premier League matches a season back in 2006, covering the 2007-08 to 2009-10 seasons. Between it and BSkyB, rights fees for the period amounted to a record £82 million.

The deals are a major step towards Canal 9 hitting the 60-per-cent penetration target it needs as a requirement for its biggest sports rights property - a package of 60 matches from top-tier domestic football’s SAS Ligaen.

Multichoice, which is owned by South African-based media group Naspers and runs the Supersport premium channels, added 683,000 subscribers across Africa in the year to March 2009, a 26-per-cent increase over the year to bring its total base to 3.3 million.

Favourites Al Jazeera Sport are likely to face at least two strong consortia challenges. Pay-broadcaster ART and the Abu Dhabi Sports channel are understood to have been working on a joint bid, although the recent departure of Abu Dhabi's head of sport Rik Jemison will not have helped the discussions.