Americas

The Athens Olympics attracted impressive ratings for Europe’s public-service broadcasters

Cricket: Asian broadcaster Ten Sports is set to acquire the worldwide rights to international cricket in Sri Lanka in a four-year deal, from 2005 to 2008.

Sepp Blatter, president of Fifa, world football’s governing body, said that Fifa may take the selling of television rights for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups in-house.

Olympics: The Japan Consortium, consisting of public-service broadcaster NHK and commercial broadcasters Fuji TV, NTV, TV Asahi, TBS and Tokyo TV, acquired the media rights for the 2010 and 2012 Olympics…

Brazil’s four biggest football clubs have refused to ratify a new television rights deal

Cricket: Australian sports broad-caster Fox Sports acquired the rights for Australia’s next two tours to India, including the four Test series in October and the seven one-day internationals in 2009, i…

The Clube dos 13, the body that organises Brazil’s top football championship, the Campeonato Brasileiro, has entered into a partnership with the Brazilian government

The Deutscher Fussball-Bund, the German football federation, signed a five-year extension, ending 2009, to its television rights deal with German public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF

Olympics: Australian telecoms provider Telstra agreed a A$9m (£4.2m/ €5.3m) deal with Seven Media Group to show exclusive live coverage of the Beijing Olympics on its BigPond mobile service. 

Football: UK commercial broadcaster ITV acquired the rights for the first-choice Champions League match on Wednesdays in a three-year deal with the Team Marketing agency

American Football and the Winter Olympics contested the top television sports viewing in the US, taking nine of the Top 10 positions in the 2002 network chart.

Football: Spanish commercial broadcaster Cuatro and digital satellite operator Digital Plus, both owned by media group Sogecable, acquired the rights for Euro 2008 from Uefa, in a deal brokered by the…

Football: Greek public-service broadcaster ERT acquired the free-to-air rights for all 31 matches of Euro 2008 in a €9.5m (£6.5m) deal with the Sportfive agency.  It is the first deal done for the championship.  Italian public-service broadcaster Rai is also set to sign a deal for Euro 2008, paying €120m.

Football: African broadcasters acquired the rights for the African Cup of Nations in a series of last-minute deals with the LC2 agency.  In Ghana, state broadcaster GTV acquired the rights for €1m (£686,000).

Cricket: The Nimbus Sport agency acquired the worldwide television rights to cricket in India in a four-year deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

The Brazilian government has found that the existing system of selling the television rights for the Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A, is anti-competitive