Australia

Cricket Australia has said it will live stream all 47 non-television matches of the 2016-17 Women’s Big Bash League for free to fans in the country, providing complete coverage of the second season of the Twenty20 franchise competition.

Australian public-service broadcaster SBS has secured exclusive free-to-air rights to two of Australia’s matches in the 2016 Autumn Internationals rugby union series.

Australian commercial broadcaster Ten and pay-television broadcaster Fox Sports have renewed rights contracts for the MotoGP motorcycling series, while the latter has also extended an agreement to cover the Superbike World Championship (WorldSBK).

Australian A-League football club Adelaide United has struck a partnership with CubeGoal, the mobile application created by pre-match information platform Cubee Technology.

Pay-television broadcaster beIN Sports has acquired rights for Australia’s upcoming rugby union games against France and England.

Commercial broadcaster Nine will pay between A$3.5m (€2.4m/$2.7m) and A$4m for free-to-air rights to the Australian national team’s remaining 2018 World Cup qualifiers.

US sports broadcaster ESPN has acquired rights to the Australian W-League women’s club football competition.

Pay-television broadcaster Sky New Zealand has agreed a three-year rights deal with the Cricket Australia national governing body.

Gillon McLachlan, chief executive of the AFL, has said that free-to-air coverage of the Aussie rules football competition is likely to drop in 2017 after revealing that Australian commercial broadcaster Channel 10 is unlikely to acquire a rights package.

Mixed martial arts promotion the Ultimate Fighting Championship has agreed a long-term partnership with Village Cinemas and Event Cinemas, which will showcase the UFC’s largest events in 63 theatre locations across Australia and New Zealand.

Tennis Australia has extended and expanded its rights partnership with Japanese pay-television broadcaster Wowow.

The Professional Squash Association (PSA) has extended rights partnerships with BT Sport in the UK and fellow pay-television operators Fox Sports Australia and Sky New Zealand.

Cricket Australia is hoping to persuade the national government to give the governing body the chance to take some short-form national team matches off the so-called anti-siphoning list.

Social media platform Twitter has struck a deal to stream live coverage of the 2016 Melbourne Cup horse racing event on November 1.

Australian digital television service Freeview has claimed a world first by unveiling plans for a new mobile app service that will deliver domestic free-to-air television channels through one centralised platform.

Australian commercial broadcaster Nine has acquired free-to-air rights to the men’s national football team’s qualifying campaign for the 2018 Fifa World Cup.