Ireland

Basketball: Brazilian commercial broadcaster Globo is to acquire the rights for the new, top-flight domestic basketball league, Novo Basquete Brasil, for R$1.5m (€474,000/ $633,710) a season.

European club competition the Heineken Cup last week became the third rugby union rights property in the last month to secure a healthy rise in rights fees from the UK television market.

Commercial channels across Europe are challenging state broadcasters’ acquisition of major sports rights, as part of wider lobbying for stricter controls and limits on the financing of the public-service sector.

The Football Association of Ireland hit back this week at suggestions that it has undervalued the media rights for the domestic football league

Football: Pan-Asian broadcaster ESPN Star Sports acquired the exclusive television rights in the Indian sub-continent for Fifa events in 2009 and 2010, including the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Ice hockey: Canadian cable sports broadcaster TSN extended its television rights deal with the National Hockey League for a further six years, through to 2013-14, in a contract worth at least C$200m (£101m/€127m). 

Competition between Irish public service broadcaster RTÉ and commercial rival TV3 resulted in Champions League rights fees more than doubling

Rugby Union: French pay-television channel Sport Plus acquired the rights for European rugby union’s top club competition, the Heineken Cup, in a three-year deal with organisers European Rugby Cup, starting t…

RTE and Setanta beat modest bid from TV3

How national football team matches are protected in different European territories

Chief Exec says at least half of 62 third- and fourth-choice package matches will be on ppv

England’s Premier League is likely to be forced to sell its television rights for the Republic of Ireland as part of the international rights package rather than as part of the main UK package.

Pay-television company BSkyB paid €7.5 million for the exclusive live-rights for all Ireland’s home internationals – friendlies and qualifiers for Euro 2004 and the 2006 World Cup.

The Football Association of Ireland is demanding compensation of €2 million (£1.44 million) from the Irish government.

The plan by Setanta Sport to launch a dedicated sports channel early next year was greeted with scepticism.

The international equestrian federation’s revamp of the sport’s national team competition appears to have been highly successful.

The Irish Government is to abandon plans to use listed-events legislation retrospectively to strike down BSkyB’s deal for the matches of the national football team.

Late kick-offs work, at least for broadcasters of the Six Nations tournament in France and the UK.  And they would like more of them.