Ireland

The Premier League’s 20 clubs are unconcerned about the small drop in the value of their domestic live rights in the next cycle, following deals this month with BT and Amazon that brought the protracted sales process to a close.

Strong competition in Ireland has helped Uefa seal a big increase for its club competition rights, as commercial broadcaster TV3 fell just short in its attempt to acquire all the rights on offer.

The Pro14 cross-border rugby union league will almost double the value of its UK and Ireland media rights once it completes its remaining deals for 2018-19 onward.

Eleven Sports’ surprise entrance into the UK sports-rights market will have been welcomed by rights-holders around the world.

Telco BT will pay an increase of about 140 per cent to keep hold of exclusive MotoGP media rights in the UK and Ireland.

The Irish Rugby Football Union roughly doubled the value of domestic rights to Ireland autumn internationals in a deal with public-service broadcaster RTÉ, and is still to sell rights in the UK.

Uefa secured increases for various national-team media rights in recent deals covering France, Ireland and Romania.

The expansion of the cross-border Pro12 rugby union competition, following the addition of two South African teams this week, has been driven by three factors: the desire to improve the competitiveness of the league, the aim of bringing its media-rights revenues closer into line with its rivals, and the availability of the Cheetahs and the Southern Kings.

Strong competition drove up the value of rights to the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Ireland this week, despite a much worse time zone than in 2015.

John Manning, research analyst for SportBusiness Intelligence, examines television audiences for this year’s Six Nations Championship

Telco Altice last week blindsided French broadcasters to acquire Premier League rights in the country with a knockout first-round bid.

Aggressive bidding from free-to-air broadcasters in Ireland helped the Six Nations Committee double its media rights fee in the territory last week.

Racecourse Media Group’s betting rights deal with Satellite Information Services will provide UK racecourses with a significant uplift in rights fees, while also ensuring more of its revenues will be distributed directly to the racecourses.

The coming months will be critical to the fortunes of UK horse racing. Racecourse Media Group, which distributes media rights on behalf of 34 UK racecourses, will agree two major deals, while in the background proposed legislation looks set to shake up the finances of the sport.

Boxing promoter Matchroom Sport is thought to have secured a small increase in the value of its rights in last week’s renewal with UK pay-television broadcaster Sky.