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The deal is a straight buy-out, understood to be worth €250 million, although Sportfive will be obliged to ensure the broadest possible audience for coverage, including the IOC’s standard commitment in each country of at least 200 hours free-to-air coverage for the Summer Games and 100 hours for the Winter Games.

Balderton’s Barry Maloney told the Daily Telegraph that “A football match that ends 5-1 does not suggest two evenly matched, equally competitive teams. The Premier League auction process has failed to introduce the fair competition that the European Commission intended.

Subscribers during the quarter remained stable at 2.39 million, but down on the 2.53 million reported at end-2007. Wholesale customers fell by 99,000 to 691,000. Premiere said that it expected subscriber growth would be broadly flat in the first half of 2009.

Orange’s offer covers a four-year period, including the Africa Cup of Nations in 2010 and 2012, while Eurosport’s bid covered eight years through to 2016. The rights are being tendered by the Sportfive agency.

Fees are expected to triple the $1.25 million a year Eurosport paid in a previous eight-year deal.

The rights had come back on the market after rival commercial broadcaster Alpha, the highest bidder in last autumn’s bidding process, opted not to sign the deal as part of a move to cut costs.

The new offer covers the annual World Championships and the World Cup series and is a relief to FISA, which had feared that its EBU deal might not be renewed after the International Olympic Committee rejected an EBU bid for the 2014 and 2116 Olympic Games.

Supersport’s La Liga deal, agreed with the Mediapro agency, covers pan-African rights. Mediapro is thought to have been the last rights holder to benefit from the competitive presence of sub-Saharan broadcaster GTV, which went into liquidation last month.

Hilinsky will take over at Record in the next few months and will be in charge of rights deals negotiated by Zebini, including the 2010 and 2012 Olympics and the 2011 and 2015 Pan American Games.

The deal includes the Fed Cup and the Hopmann Cup.

Mediapro has traditionally sold the rights directly only in Japan, with the Sportfive agency usually distributing the rights elsewhere in Asia.

BSkyB picked up five of the six 23-match packages, one more than it has at present, paying £1.623 billion. Setanta picked up one package for £159 million but the viability of its business model is threatened by the fact that it has now lost half its Premier League offering.

The deal is the third consecutive three-year contract signed by Sportfive for these markets. The two agencies have also renewed their cooperation and alliance regarding Mediapro’s representation of Sportfive properties in Spain.

In France, live coverage was shared between premium channel Canal Plus, which drew 1.1 million viewers, and public-service broadcaster France Télévisions, which drew 4.5 million viewers and a 24.4-per-cent share, according to audience measurement agency Mediametrie.

Eurosport's television coverage of the Australian Open drew 52 million different viewers − its best-ever reach for the event. About 17.3 million different viewers followed the final, with a record average audience of 3.1 million per quarter of an hour.

Teleclub will show three matches a week. The deal was agreed after an earlier deal between MP & Silva and Swiss media agency Heikon fell through.

NBC holds three of the top-five Super Bowl audiences, with 94.1 million viewers in 1996 (3rd) and 91 million in 1993 (5th). Rival network CBS drew the 4th biggest audience in 2007, with 93.2 million viewers.

The group’s television and radio broadcasting division saw a 29-per-cent drop in profits to $655 million, with large decreases reported by the Disney cable channels and sports network ESPN, due to falling advertising revenue and the increase in rights fees paid for NFL football.

The member broadcasters are in Argentina (cable sports broadcaster TyC), Bolivia (commercial channel Red Uno), Chile (commercial channel Canal 13), Mexico (commercial broadcaster TV Azteca), Panama (commercial broadcasters TV Max and Medcom) and Peru (commercial channel ATV).