News

DirecTV is paying $1 billion a year for the rights for the NFL Sunday Ticket package, covering out-of-market matches, up from $700 million at present.

Fox and Setanta are now involved in a period of exclusive talks with Uefa’s Team Marketing agency after offering about $10 million a year for the rights for the Champions League and Europa League, estimated to be more than triple the existing fee. ESPN has held US rights since 1994. Two weeks ago it lost out to Fox Sports Latin America for the Latin American rights.

Sony is understood to be paying about $1 billion over nine years, from 2009 to 2017, approximately 40 per cent more than it had been paying previously.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV is paying $100 million in the deal, almost seven times what it paid for the 2006 and 2008 Games, held in Beijing.

CCTV was estimated to have generated $394 million in advertising revenue around its Beijing coverage.

Fox, in which Rupert Murdoch owns a 49-per-cent stake, beat long-term incumbent ESPN for the Latin American rights outside Brazil for the Champions League and Europa League from 2009-10 to 2011-12.

The DFL is close to signing deals in the Americas and the Indian sub-continent, with Taiwan, China and the UK still outstanding.

Premiere acquired Bundesliga 2 rights as part of a wider deal agreed late last year for the top-tier Bundesliga, worth €1 billion over four years.

ESPN bid for Bundesliga 2 rights in the course of the negotiations, losing out to Premiere. ESPN had also considered bidding for the top-tier Bundesliga. It decided against it, but its interest was nonetheless key in forcing the price up.

Telecinco claims that the agency, which sells the rights on behalf of the Spanish football federation, never gave it a chance to exercise matching rights option in its favour before awarding the rights to public-service broadcaster TVE.

For more details see the latest issue of TV Sports Markets.

Sogecable successfully exercised a one-year renewal option in a previous contract to extend its deal with the club for the 2008-09 season after Real Madrid had signed in 2007 a five-year deal, running from 2008-09 to 2012-13, with sports rights agency Mediapro.

Mediapro accepted the option, and moved its deal with Real Madrid back by one year, so that it runs from 2009-10 to 2013-14.

Orange is presently appealing the he decision of Paris’s Tribunal de commerce, which ruled that its strategy of offering its Orange Sport channel only to Orange ADSL subscribers was anti-competitive. If it fails in its appeal, Orange said that it will cease marketing operations for Orange Sport, the channel that carries the matches.