TV rights 2: Indian cricket, golf, darts and mobile deals

Cricket: The Nimbus Sport agency acquired the worldwide television rights to cricket in India in a four-year deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India.  Nimbus will pay $612.18m (£352m/€514m) over the four years from next month to the end of March 2010.

The next highest bid was $550.49m – the sum of individual-territory bids: pan-Asian broadcaster ESPN Star Sports bidding $401.89m for Indian television rights, Nimbus Sport $126m for international rights, Ad Labs $14.8m for Indian radio rights and Reliance Infocomm $7.8m for Indian broadband rights. There were also global bids of $513m from Zee Telefilms and $478m from Sony Entertainment Television, although the latter was disqualified.

Cricket: UK pay-operator British Sky Broadcasting acquired the English-language rights to all international cricket in India, covering the 10 tours in the four years up to March 2010, in a deal with Nimbus Sport worth about $20m (£11.5m/€16.8m).

Golf: US cable and satellite broadcaster ESPN acquired the live rights to the first day’s play of the 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014 Ryder Cups in a sublicensing deal with US network NBC.  ESPN also acquired the right to re-air NBC coverage as well as to broadcast extended highlights.  NBC, which pays around $15m (£8.6m/€12.6m) a year for the Ryder Cup, will continue to broadcast the final two days of the competition.

Golf: Asian broadcaster Ten Sports signed a deal with Fox Sports International for coverage of the US PGA tour in the Indian sub-continent.

Darts: Dutch commercial broad-caster SBS6 acquired the exclusive rights for all events organised by the Professional Darts Corporation, including the PDC World Champion-ship, in a five-year deal from 2006 to 2010, worth about €750,000 (£513,700) a year.

Rugby league: French pay-channel Sport Plus acquired the rights for English Super League matches involving the newly-created French team Catalans Dragons.

New media: Swiss mobile operator Swisscom Mobile acquired live TV-via-mobile rights for football’s 2006 World Cup in a deal with the Infront agency.  It is the first deal of its kind and covers the rights for all 64 matches.

New media: Belgian mobile phone operators Proximus and Base acquired non-exclusive mobile rights for the Belgian football league in a two-and-a-half-year deal ending at end June 2008.  The mobile operators will offer delayed clips from matches.