Italian commercial broadcaster Mediaset acquired live rights for the remaining three races of this season’s America’s Cup World Series, the feeder series for the marquee America’s Cup event.
Mediaset will begin its coverage of the series with 10 hours of live racing from the Naples regatta, which takes place on April 11-15. The broadcaster will show the race on its free-to-air channels Italia1 and Italia2.
The broadcaster will follow this with live coverage of the Venice regatta in May, and then the Newport, US regatta in June.
The deal follows recent rights agreements by the America’s Cup Event Authority, the rights-holder, in several other territories. US network NBC acquired rights to all of the events which make up the America’s Cup calendar: the World Series, the Louis Vuitton Cup this year, and the America’s Cup itself in 2013. UK pay-television broadcaster BSkyB, French pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus and Scandinavian broadcaster Modern Times Group have also agreed rights deals in recent weeks.
New Zealand public-service broadcaster TVNZ acquired rights to the 2011-12 World Series last year.