Italy

Mediapro is close to finalising domestic mobile rights deals for Spanish football’s La Liga, the first such deals to be agreed after a three-year hiatus caused by the football war between Mediapro and Sogecable.

No UK broadcasters were willing to show England’s final 2010 World Cup qualifier against the Ukraine but national team matches are still a sure-fire guarantee of big television audiences.

Action Sports: Pan-European broadcaster Eurosport extended its deal with the Alliance of Action Sports, covering live rights in Europe for the Summer and Winter Dew Tours, for another five years

Basketball’s Euroleague is poised to agree a three-fold increase in rights fees in Greece, becoming the latest rights-holder to benefit from renewed pay-television competition in the country

The international rights for Italy’s Serie A will be split into three territories – Europe, Asia and the Middle East and the rest of the world.

European broadcasters will be scrutinising ratings for last month’s World Athletics Championships as they weigh up their bids for the rights of future championships.

Europe’s top satellite pay-television operators will be casting envious glances at the UK’s BSkyB, after it enjoyed what analysts described as a “flawless quarter” to end-June.

Lega Calcio, is up almost €1.6 billion ($2.3 billion) after the first hand in a game of high-stakes poker with the Italian antitrust authority.

The return of Lance Armstrong to this year’s Tour de France looks to have played a key role in driving strong television audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

Football: Italian satellite broadcaster Sky Italia acquired the live satellite rights for all Serie A matches from 2010-11 to 2011-12 in a deal with Lega Calcio. Sky will pay €580m ($824m) a season.

The Infront agency looks close to achieving a result which defies market logic: increasing the Lega Calcio’s rights fees without generating any direct competition between media operators.

The Lega Calcio, said that the return to the collective selling of Serie A’s media rights had laid the basis for a “cultural revolution” in Italian football.

The Lega Basket was forced to accept a very small increase in the value of its media rights for the next two seasons after expected rival bids failed to materialise.

Basketball: Italian pay-broadcaster Sky Italia acquired the exclusive live rights for the top-tier domestic Serie A league in a two-year deal with Lega Basket, paying €5.4m ($7.6m).

The cumulative average television audience across the big five European markets for this season’s Champions League final was 27 per cent up on the final in 2007-08.

Italy’s antitrust and communications authorities are close to approving the guidelines for the sale of the media rights to Serie A and Serie B from the 2010-2011 season onwards.