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The deal is a straight buy-out, understood to be worth €250 million, although Sportfive will be obliged to ensure the broadest possible audience for coverage, including the IOC’s standard commitment in each country of at least 200 hours free-to-air coverage for the Summer Games and 100 hours for the Winter Games.

Balderton’s Barry Maloney told the Daily Telegraph that “A football match that ends 5-1 does not suggest two evenly matched, equally competitive teams. The Premier League auction process has failed to introduce the fair competition that the European Commission intended.

Subscribers during the quarter remained stable at 2.39 million, but down on the 2.53 million reported at end-2007. Wholesale customers fell by 99,000 to 691,000. Premiere said that it expected subscriber growth would be broadly flat in the first half of 2009.

Orange’s offer covers a four-year period, including the Africa Cup of Nations in 2010 and 2012, while Eurosport’s bid covered eight years through to 2016. The rights are being tendered by the Sportfive agency.

Fees are expected to triple the $1.25 million a year Eurosport paid in a previous eight-year deal.

The rights had come back on the market after rival commercial broadcaster Alpha, the highest bidder in last autumn’s bidding process, opted not to sign the deal as part of a move to cut costs.

The new offer covers the annual World Championships and the World Cup series and is a relief to FISA, which had feared that its EBU deal might not be renewed after the International Olympic Committee rejected an EBU bid for the 2014 and 2116 Olympic Games.

Supersport’s La Liga deal, agreed with the Mediapro agency, covers pan-African rights. Mediapro is thought to have been the last rights holder to benefit from the competitive presence of sub-Saharan broadcaster GTV, which went into liquidation last month.

Hilinsky will take over at Record in the next few months and will be in charge of rights deals negotiated by Zebini, including the 2010 and 2012 Olympics and the 2011 and 2015 Pan American Games.

The deal includes the Fed Cup and the Hopmann Cup.

Mediapro has traditionally sold the rights directly only in Japan, with the Sportfive agency usually distributing the rights elsewhere in Asia.