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La Liga is a cornerstone property for Al Jazeera Sport and was its first major acquisition when it launched back in 2003. Since then Al Jazeera Sport has grown to become the region’s dominant sports broadcaster, a position it effectively attained when it agreed a $200 million deal early last year for the rights for Uefa’s Champions League and Europa League competitions.

This year is the first in which the region will host two grands prix, with the addition of Abu Dhabi circuit. The Abu Dhabi Sports Channel was favourite to pick up the 2009 rights but walked away from talks after the Bahrain Circuit asked for $16 million for the rights, approximately 10 times what was paid in 2008.

The agency is claiming breach of contract and alleges that right from the start of negotiations the Tour acted in bad faith. It also claims that a matching rights option on the 2009 rights remains valid, despite the Tour arguing otherwise. During a period of exclusive talks last summer, WSG offered to increase its minimum guarantee to $550,000 for 2009.

Peter Hutton, now senior vice president of programming and production, is promoted to chief operating officer and will run Taj TV from May 1, 2009.

He will work in close co-ordination with Himanshu Mody of Zee and Dr. Bhaskar Banerjee of Bukhatir Investments, representing the broadcaster's two joint shareholders.

If the commission waives the conditions, which limit Sky to buying premium sports rights only for satellite technology and for a maximum two years’ duration, it could open the way for a platform-neutral bidding war between Sky, digital-terrestrial service Mediaset Premium and Italy’s dominant telecoms operator, Telecom Italia.

Uefa, European football's governing body, had sent out tenders to broadcasters and agencies on February 6.

He said that “It’s not for me to dictate to a rights holder how they should sell their rights. What we want is the chance to pitch and show what we can do to showcase their sport. There is no such thing as free sports coverage. We all pay our licence fee.”

The offer from France Télévisions, which pays €12 million a year in a deal expiring at the end of this season, was the only one received by the LFP. Bilalian said that it would not be increased, citing the worsening economic situation and the fact that the broadcaster is no longer allowed to carry advertising after 8pm.

Mediapro said that from the 2009-10 season, it will show between two and three matches per week on its wholly-owned GolTV premium football channel, launched last year as a mini-pay channel showing a range of European and Latin American leagues.

Nova had made a strong bid for one of the first-choice packages in the initial bidding last autumn but lost out to free-to-air broadcasters, public-service ERT and commercial channel Mega. Nova is paying just under €5 million a year for the rights, a little less than what On Telecoms had agreed to pay.

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