Europe

World football’s governing body Fifa has launched a tender process for media rights in the UK to the next edition of the Women’s World Cup, which will be hosted by France in 2019.

Spanish agency Mediapro has moved into the esports sector by acquiring a majority stake in Fandroid, the organising body of the domestic Liga de Videojuegos Profesional.

The North American NBA basketball league has extended and expanded rights partnerships with Chinese IPTV provider BesTV and Italian pay-television broadcaster Sky Italia.

UK telecommunications company TalkTalk has agreed a multi-year extension to its deal with pay-television broadcaster Sky for carriage of its Sky Sports channels.

German pay-television broadcaster Sky Deutschland has said it will close down its 3D channel next year as it switches its focus to ultra-high-definition coverage of sports events with two new channels set to broadcast their first games later this month.

Dugout, a new digital media platform that will be supported by a host of elite European football clubs, will launch in November.

European Professional Club Rugby, the organising body of the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup competitions, has said it will seek to strike a free-to-air rights deal in Ireland after conceding that the current broadcast model is not “working very well”.

German commercial broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1’s free-to-air channel ProSieben Maxx has expanded its partnership with WWE under a new multi-year rights deal with the US wrestling organisation.

The Swiss Football League, the operating body of the top two divisions of Swiss football, has agreed domestic and international broadcast rights deals, as well as a marketing rights agreement, in contracts the organisation said are worth almost 70 per cent more than the value of the current partnerships.

Swiss public-service broadcaster SRG SSR has acquired the exclusive media rights in Switzerland to a number of major international events across the three winter sport disciplines of ice hockey, bobsleigh/skeleton and curling.

French pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus has acquired rights to the newly-launched Basketball Champions League European club tournament.

French stock market regulator the AMF has blocked telecommunications company Altice’s bid to secure full control of its SFR subsidiary claiming that it lacked information for minority shareholders to judge it.

German public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF have acquired rights for the Uefa Euro 2020 national team football tournament.

International media and entertainment company Discovery Communications has signed a sublicensing deal for Olympic Games rights with Belarus National State Broadcasting.

Irish pay-television broadcaster Eir Sport has acquired rights to next month’s rugby union Test match between Ireland and New Zealand, which will be staged in the US city of Chicago.

Two men who supplied illegal access to live coverage of English Premier League football matches have been ordered to pay back nearly £1m (€1.1m/$1.3m) into the public purse.