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Fueg’s role will be in the area of worldwide hospitality and sponsorship, having been actively responsible for the corporate hospitality at UEFA Euro 2008, as well as at various winter sports events.

Public-service broadcaster TVNZ, commercial channel TV3 and pay-broadcaster Sky TV had made a joint-offer for the rights but are now negotiating separately after the warning from the IRB. A deal is expected later this month, once the tournament venues and schedule has been finalised.

Overall ratings for cable viewers 4 years-old and above increased as much as 160% over last year across the three people-metered markets of Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia.

A new Ficci-KPMG report on the Indian entertainment industry forecasts that by 2013 there would be 149 million TV homes, 85 per cent of which will receive signals via cable and satellite.

The IBU is now in a period of exclusive talks with the EBU, which has made an offer of about €45 million, a 60-per-cent rise on what it pays now. The new deal will cover the worldwide rights for the annual World Cup and World Championship events from the 2010-11 to 2013-14 seasons.

Orange has one month to seal sublicensing deals for Orange Sport with other operators, starting with Neuf and SFR (both controlled by Vivendi), the two rival ADSL services that originally brought the complaint to the Paris court.

The new law will allow for cross-ownership of broadcasters above the five per cent maximum currently allowed and is expected to give the green light to the launch of pay-services on digital terrestrial.

Pay-platform Digital Plus increased its EBIT 34.6 per cent to €237.8m, but saw a 30,000 year-on-year drop in subscriber numbers to 2.035 million subscribers. In the last quarter, subscribers fell by 26,000, although ARPU increased to €44.5 a month, up from €41.7 the previous quarter.

Flagship channels TVP1 and TVP2 being granted budgets of PLN179.3 million and PLN159 million respectively.

According to Wirtualne Media, TVP Sport and TVP HD have been allocated a combined total of PLN89.6 million.

Live coverage of races will be shown on Viasat’s commercial channel TV3. Practice and qualifying sessions will be aired live on new local premium pay-television channel Viasat Sport Baltic.

Kentaro, which beat off competition from incumbent agency IMG, is now thought to have the rights for 14 European federations.

The deal, with the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol, includes worldwide (excluding Brazil) internet and mobile rights, as well as comprehensive sponsorship rights, both internationally and within Brazil.

Traffic has already sold the title-sponsorship rights to car manufacturer Kia.

The tour accounts for an estimated 90 per cent of Sony’s $50 million, four-year deal with the board, but the broadcaster has so far said to have generated not much more than $5 million in advertising.

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.