Italy

Rugby Union
Europe

Italian state broadcaster Rai has agreed a one-year deal with the Lega Italiana Rugby Eccellenza for the exclusive rights to the top division
Australia

The Athens Olympics attracted impressive ratings for Europe’s public-service broadcasters
Football
Europe

Sports agencies have had a busy fortnight negotiating deals for the opening round of 2006 World Cup
Sailing
Europe

The America’s Cup, sailing’s premier event, is on course for a huge increase in television coverage
Football
Europe

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is to ask the European Commission to reconsider the conditions under which it allowed the creation of pay-television operator Sky Italia
Football
Australia

Olympics: Indonesia’s six main free-to-air broadcasters will not cover the Athens Olympics despite the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union reducing its initial $1.35m (£730,000/€1.1m) asking price, working out at $225,000 for each broadcaster, to $400,000.

Football
Europe

Telecom Italia has taken the country by surprise in challenging for the digital-terrestrial rights for Serie A football.

Football
Europe

Italy’s football federation and football league are taking seriously detailed proposals for a major overhaul of professional football
Football
Europe

Giovanni Bruno, head of sport at Rupert Murdoch’s Italian pay-television platform Sky Italia, said this week that the company would fight to defend its dominance of the country’s pay-television market
Austria

Viewing rises in four out of the top five European television markets
Athletics
Europe

Channel set for December launch, once European Commission is assured that it has no links with News International or Sky Italia
Basketball
Europe

Talks for rights for Spanish league founder with five weeks of season already gone
Football
Europe

'Television Without Frontiers' directive does not permit advert while football match halves are underway
Europe

Spanish public-service broadcaster TVE is enjoying a flying start for its coverage of motorcycling’s MotoGP this season, with the rivalry between young Spanish riders Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa

Football
Europe

The Italian football league, Lega Calcio, could face a heavy fine if found guilty of illegally blocking the sale of television rights
Basketball
Asia

The Deutscher Fussball-Bund, the German football federation, signed a five-year extension, ending 2009, to its television rights deal with German public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF

Cricket
France

IMG set to win one, lose one as football talks close
Rugby Union
Europe

After a record-breaking 2007, television audiences for the 2008 Six Nations rugby union tournament fell in all four markets of the participating countries