Australia

Australian Open tennis accounted for nine of the Top 30 most popular sports events on Australian television

Formula One: Formula One Management signed new deals in four of the sport’s major markets, renewing deals in Italy with public-service broadcaster Rai, in Brazil with TV Globo, in Australia with Channel Ten and in Russia signing a deal with a new partner, the RTL-owned Ren TV

Formula One has signed long-term deals in four major markets – Italy, Brazil, Australia and Russia – securing rights-fee increases across the board.

Snooker: UK public-service broad-caster the BBC renewed its deal with the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association for a further five years, from 2007 to 2011, paying about £20m (€29m).  The deal is thought to be a significant cut on the existing deal, worth about £28m over a five-and-a-half year period.

Football: US Disney-owned broad-casters ABC and ESPN, and Spanish-language broadcaster Univision, acquired the rights to all Fifa events from 2007 to 2014, including the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, in deals worth a total of $425m (£239m/€351m).

Football: French commercial broad-caster TF1 acquired the free-to-air Champions League rights for a further three-years, from 2006-07 to 2008-09

The spectre of far-reaching media reforms and of a court case launched by commercial broadcaster Channel Seven

Rugby union: UK pay-broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting acquired the exclusive live rights to European club rugby’s Heineken Cup competition in the UK and Ireland in a four-year deal, from 2006-07 to 2…

Australia’s Channel Nine looks set to acquire the rights for the 2007 rugby World Cup

The International Olympic Committee has enraged broadcasters worldwide by considering extensive changes to the scheduling of events at the Beijing Olympics.

Tennis: Asian broadcaster Ten Sports sublicensed coverage of the finals of this year’s French Open tournament to rival pay-operator Zee Sports.

Channel Seven's acquisition of the rights for the V8 Supercar series reflects an all-out assault to become Australia’s most popular network.

Football:  Italian pay-television operator Sky Italia acquired the pay-television rights to all 64 matches of the 2006 World Cup, 39 of which it will show exclusively, in a deal with the Infront agency.  Sky is paying an estimated €40m (£27.3m) for the rights.  The deal also includes the rights to this year’s Fifa Confederations Cup, the Fifa World Youth Championships and the 16 26-minute preview programmes produced by Infront (page 1).

Broadcaster to help West Indies Cricket Board sell rights elsewhere

Football: French commercial broad-caster TF1 agreed a deal with the Infront agency for the pay-television rights for the 2006 World Cup and sublicensed them to pay-broadcaster Canal Plus and its own cable and satellite channel Eurosport.

Athletics: The Dentsu agency, acting on behalf of the International Association of Athletics Federations, brokered three-year deals with broadcasters in China, Korea and New Zealand covering the 2007 and…