Oceania

Australia’s Channel Nine looks set to acquire the rights for the 2007 rugby World Cup

The International Olympic Committee has enraged broadcasters worldwide by considering extensive changes to the scheduling of events at the Beijing Olympics.

Tennis: Asian broadcaster Ten Sports sublicensed coverage of the finals of this year’s French Open tournament to rival pay-operator Zee Sports.

Channel Seven's acquisition of the rights for the V8 Supercar series reflects an all-out assault to become Australia’s most popular network.

Olympics: Brazilian free-to-air broadcaster TV Record acquired the Brazilian media rights across all platforms for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and the 2012 Olympics Games in London in a $60m (£31m/€45m) de…

Basketball: Greek public-service broadcaster ERT acquired the rights to the 2009 and 2011 European Championships and the 2006 and 2010 World Championships in a deal with Fiba, the international basketball…

Football:  Italian pay-television operator Sky Italia acquired the pay-television rights to all 64 matches of the 2006 World Cup, 39 of which it will show exclusively, in a deal with the Infront agency.  Sky is paying an estimated €40m (£27.3m) for the rights.  The deal also includes the rights to this year’s Fifa Confederations Cup, the Fifa World Youth Championships and the 16 26-minute preview programmes produced by Infront (page 1).

Broadcaster to help West Indies Cricket Board sell rights elsewhere

Football: French commercial broad-caster TF1 agreed a deal with the Infront agency for the pay-television rights for the 2006 World Cup and sublicensed them to pay-broadcaster Canal Plus and its own cable and satellite channel Eurosport.

Athletics: The Dentsu agency, acting on behalf of the International Association of Athletics Federations, brokered three-year deals with broadcasters in China, Korea and New Zealand covering the 2007 and…

Horseracing: Australian free-to-air broadcaster Nine Network acquired live rights to 13 premier race meetings in 2007 from  the Australian Racing Board, which brokered the deal through TVN, owners of …

Australian Rules: Australian pay-television operator Foxtel acquired pay-television rights for the Australian Football League in a sub-licensing deal worth A$315

Football: Free-to-air broadcasters HRT (Croatia), RUV (Iceland) and TV3 (Slovenia), acquired exclusive live rights to all 31 matches of Euro 2008 in deals with the Sportfive agency, which is marketing…

Changes sought to make rights easier to sell on

The games may be great, but timing hits key audience

Cricket Australia has surprised television sports experts by not going out to tender when it awarded exclusive rights for Australian cricket to Nine network