Europe
Sky Sports may follow Setanta in joining Freeview
Pay-television operator British Sky Broadcasting is considering launching a Sky Sports channel on the digital-terrestrial service Freeview.
TV RIGHTS CLIPS 2: Football, rugby, athletics, boxing and more
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…
Women attract year’s top football TV audiences
The women’s Euro 2005 football tournament last month attracted the biggest football television audiences of the year in Sweden and Norway
Rai finally takes Champions League rights off Mediaset
Italian state broadcaster Rai won the live, free-to-air rights for football’s Champions League, taking them from commercial rival Mediaset
World Cup rights once again go to pay-TV channel
Portuguese pay-television channel Sport TV acquired the rights for football’s 2006 World Cup
Sports move gives Telecom Italia strategic presence
The plan of commercial broadcaster La 7 to launch a 24-hour sports channel on its digital-terrestrial platform will help the company make the most of its investment in sport
Fifa signing direct deals with top five plus Scandinavia
Fifa has agreed or is in the process of agreeing deals for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups in the top five European television countries
TV RIGHTS CLIPS 2: Horse racing, boxing, tennis and more
Horseracing: UK commercial broadcaster Channel 4 signed a one-year deal to continue its horseracing coverage in 2006 after the horseracing and betting industries agreed to pay the channel £4.95m (€7.4m).
TV RIGHTS CLIPS 1: Football
Football: Norwegian commercial channel TV2 an telecoms company Telenor acquired the rights to all Norwegian football in a record NKr1bn (£85m/€127m) deal (page 1)
La Liga viewing falls 6 per cent as audiences split
Free-to-air television audiences for live coverage of Spanish football’s La Liga in 2004-05 fell six per cent on the previous season.
What’s a fair price for a listed event with no glamour?
Spanish television’s near-black-out of the final of football’s domestic cup competition, the Copa del Rey, last weekend underlined a major flaw in Spanish listed-events legislation
Italy leads in winning new pay-homes
Pay-television operators in four of the five top European television markets reported growing numbers of subscribers
Canal Plus loses five Serie A clubs to ambitious TV4
Pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus won the rights for 15 of the 20 clubs in Italy’s Serie A football league last week
Agencies strike fast, but FA may do the job itself
Two agencies have put in pre-emptive bids for the rights for the top Swedish league and the national football team
And that’s well-backed Setanta coming up on the outside
Setanta, the pay and pay-per-view company, has emerged as a major player in the UK and Irish markets
Record deal for Nordic sport
The biggest-ever sports-rights deal in the history of Nordic television was agreed late this week
Japan first to sign Latin American deal
Brazilian and Argentinian world tour friendly matches sold to Japan Sports Marketing
Legal moves
Two main lawyers involved in billion-dollar deal between International Cricket Council and ESS are moving on to new positions