Spain

Talks for the next three-year tranche of international television rights for Spanish football are now in full swing, with the Mediapro agency hopeful of good revenue increases.

Four Spanish Liga football clubs are putting pressure on sports rights agency Mediapro to pay them more in television rights fees by offering their domestic and international rights to rival operators.

Commercial broadcaster Telecinco entered Spain’s football rights war when it bought the television rights to this week’s domestic Copa del Rey round of 16 match.

New domestic deals for two of Europe’s top five football leagues accounted for two of the three biggest television rights contracts signed in 2008.

Football: Japanese pay-broadcaster SkyPerfecTV acquired the communication-satellite (CS) rights for all 64 matches of the 2010 World Cup in a deal with the Dentsu agency

Football: Philippines commercial broadcaster ABS-CBN acquired the rights for the 2010 World Cup in a $1m (€750,000) deal with the Football Media Services agency.

Telecinco’s deal for Uefa’s second-tier competition, the Europa League, is its biggest-ever investment in football rights, showing that even advertising-funded broadcasters are still willing to back sport despite the market slowdown.

The court date set for this month that was to rule, once and for all, on the ownership of television rights to Spain’s football Liga has been postponed by at least six months, to next June or July.

Sports rights agency Mediapro is thought to be close to renewing a deal for Spanish football’s top-tier La Liga with pan-regional pay-operator DirecTV Latin America.

Spanish television audiences for the 2008 MotoGP season rose for the third year in succession, with young local riders Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo both contending for the championship.

Despite the most exciting Formula One season in recent memory, with the driver’s and constructor’s championships going down to the wire, television audiences fell in a number of major European markets.

Globo said that it was in talks with the Team Marketing agency about the possibility of acquiring rights for European football’s Champions League competition from 2009-10 to 2011-12.

Forthcoming negotiations for the domestic rights for English rugby union’s Guinness Premiership will act as an interesting barometer of the state of the UK sports rights market, three months before the start of football’s Premier League rights talks.

Football: Pan-Scandinavian broadcaster Modern Times Group acquired the rights in Denmark, Sweden and Norway for the Uefa Champions League and Uefa Super Cup in a three-year deal from 2009-10 to 2011-12

English football’s Premier League has blocked its Greek licensee Nova from showing its Saturday 3pm matches.

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.