Singaporean telecommunications operator SingTel acquired a range of European football rights for the launch of a new sports channel on its IPTV pay-television service Mio TV.
SingTel secured rights to the English FA Cup and Capital One Cup knockout tournaments, as well as the Championship – the second tier of English football.
The company also acquired rights for the Italian Serie A and French Ligue 1 top divisions, along with England and Italy national team home qualifying games for the 2014 Fifa World Cup.
According to the Business Times newspaper, the rights will be exploited on a non-exclusive basis on the new Mio Sports service, which launched last week.
The lengths of the deals were not disclosed.
SingTel is entering the final year of a three-year deal, from 2010-11 to 2012-13, to broadcast the English Premier League and a company spokesman said: “We will be bidding for the [next cycle of] rights, taking into consideration the new cross-carriage rules, which state that exclusive content must be made available across operators.”