Belgium

Cycling: French public-service broadcaster France Télévisions renewed its deal for the Tour de France.

Free-to-air television audiences in French-speaking Belgium were deprived of seeing home star Justine Henin-Hardenne’s progress to the quarter-finals of this year’s Australian Open

The Sportfive agency has agreed deals for Euro 2008 in Israel and Flemish-speaking Belgium

The finals of the Wimbledon tennis championship drew good television audiences in many of the sport’s top European markets last weekend. 

Public service broadcasters paying less for Euro 2008 rights

Football: French commercial broadcasters TF1 and M6 confirmed their joint acquisition of the rights for Euro 2008, in a €100m (£68m) deal brokered by the Sportfive agency. 

Belgian FA accepts offer for rights lower than bid rejected last year

The Dutch and Belgian domestic football leagues, whose pioneering television-rights deals with telecom companies started this month, have begun their seasons with the bulk of live matches accessible to only a handful of intrepid subscribers

Football: Spanish Primera Liga champions FC Barcelona agreed a long-term deal with the Mediapro agency which guarantees the club at least €1bn (£685m) for its domestic and international television rights for the seven years from 2006-07 to 2012-13.

The Belgian Football Association is threatening to sell the home matches of the national team on a match-by-match basis in Flanders.

Football: Spanish free-to-air broadcaster Cuatro sublicensed the non-exclusive rights to at least seven matches from the upcoming World Cup from rival broadcaster La Sexta in a deal worth €20m (£14m).

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).

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.

German cable company consortium is takeover target for Liberty Global

The pay-television members of a consortium of broadcasters have begun legal proceedings against the Belgian football league after losing out in the award of the league’s television rights

American football:  The US National Football League signed two more television deals: an eight-year deal with Disney-owned sports cable network ESPN for Monday night games, worth $1.