TV rights 1: football, golf and Commonwealth Games

·   Football: The Dentsu and Infront agencies acquired the Rest of Asia rights to the 2010 and 2014 World Cups in a deal with Fifa, football’s world governing body.  Dentsu, which acquired Japanese rights in an earlier deal, and Infront put down a minimum guarantee of $350m (£200m/€290m).  The two companies have set up a joint-venture headquartered in Singapore to sell the rights.

·   Football: Australian public-service broadcaster SBS acquired the rights for football’s World Cups in 2010 and 2014 from Fifa in a deal worth A$20m (£8.3m/€12m).  The deal covers all free-to-air, pay-television and internet rights for both tournaments and, like SBS’s 2006 World Cup deal, covers Oceania, including New Zealand.  SBS will handle the sale of those rights in co-operation with Fifa.

·   Football: Pay and pay-per-view broadcaster Setanta Sports acquired secondary language rights in the US for the 2006 World Cup.  Among the rights are French, German, Italian, and Polish and languages from the Far and Middle East.

·   Football: Ghana state broadcasters Ghana Television and Metro TV acquired the rights for the 2006 World Cup.

·   Football: French commercial broad-caster TF1 acquired the rights for the French national team’s Euro 2008 qualifier away to Scotland direct from TWI, the agency that markets Scotland’s international rights.  The French Football Federation is presently selling the rights for the team’s home and away Euro 2008 qualifiers, but is yet to secure all the away matches.  TF1’s pre-emptive move means the federation can no longer sell one broadcaster exclusive rights to all French matches, unless TF1 is the winning bidder.

·   Football: Cable and satellite broadcaster UKTV, a joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Flextech Television, owned by cable operator Telewest, acquired the non-exclusive live rights to 31 matches, and non-exclusive highlights to the remaining 33, in a sublicensing deal with public-service broadcaster the BBC.  The deal is UKTV’s biggest ever acquisition.

·   Commonwealth Games: Singapore public-service broadcaster MediaCorp agreed to pay the $175,000 (£100,000/ €144,000) allotted by the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union as its share of rights fees for the Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

·   Golf: Pan-European broadcaster SBS Broadcasting acquired the pan-Scandinavian rights to the European PGA Tour in a three-year deal from 2007 to 2009.  The deal also includes the rights to the 2007 and 2009 Ryder Cups.