United Kingdom

Football

Football: England’s Premier League generated £1.782bn (€2.05bn/$2.62bn) in the sale of its domestic live rights for the three-year period from 2010-11 to 2012-13. The deal is a 4.5-pe
Football

The BBC’s deal for free-to-air highlights has got Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore off to a solid start in his latest set of media rights negotiations.

Cricket

The lack of government legislation in India over news access to sports events is provoking further tension between the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the Nimbus Communications agency.
Football

Football: UK public-service broadcaster the BBC extended its deal for Premier League highlights for a further three years, from 2010-11 to 2012-13, paying £173m (€185m/ $237m).
Athletics

Asian Games: Hong Kong pay-broadcaster I-Cable Communications acquired the exclusive television and internet rights for the 2010 Asian Games, in Guangzhou, in a deal worth an estimated $1m (€780,000).
Football

In a major year of sporting action, Uefa events accounted for the biggest audiences for the BBC, ITV1, Five and BSkyB.
American Football

UK pay-broadcaster Setanta’s audiences for Premier League football are up 56 per cent on last season, according to the latest figures.
Athletics

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.

Athletics

Athletics: French pay-television operator Canal Plus will broadcast the new six-meeting Ligue national d’athlétisme after nuclear energy company Aveva stepped in with a new sponsorship deal.
Basketball

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.
Athletics

Diminishing interest in athletics has resulted in the sport’s national governing body being forced to accept a significant reduction in rights fees in renewing its deal with public-service broadcaster the BBC.
Horse Racing

Channel Four’s decision to drop its coverage of the alpine skiing, snowboarding and Nordic World Cups has drawn strong criticism from both the sports and television production sectors.
Rugby Union

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.

Athletics

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.

Athletics

Athletics: UK public-service broad-caster the BBC extended its deal for domestic athletics events for a further six years, from 2009 to 2014
Football

Uefa has paid out an estimated €5 million ($6.4 million) to broadcasters in compensation for the signal blackouts during the Germany-Turkey semi-final in this summer’s Euro 2008 championship.

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.