Baseball

Media rights clips from 24 October 6 November

North America's Major League Baseball has agreed a multi-platform programming partnership with Viacom-owned youth entertainment media group MTV.

US MLB baseball club the Chicago Cubs have exercised an option to curtail their local rights deal with cable-television broadcaster WGN-TV after the 2014 season, according to the Chicago Tribune newspaper.

The Fox International Channels broadcast subsidiary of media company 21st Century Fox has acquired rights for coverage of North America’s Major League Baseball across 30 European territories.

Major League Baseball has said it is close to approving the Los Angeles Dodgers’ planned regional pay-television sports channel, which is being launched as part of the club’s new local rights deal with US broadcaster Time Warner Cable.

US media and technology corporation Comcast has said it is prepared to bid for Comcast SportsNet Houston, the exclusive home of Houston Astros MLB baseball and Houston Rockets NBA basketball games, if it can force a sale of the financially-troubled regional sports broadcaster.

German commercial sports broadcaster Sport1 has launched a live streaming service to accompany its new US sports pay-television channel.

Interview with Olaf Schroeder, chief editor and programme director of Sport1, on the broadcaster’s recent rights acquisitions and its position in the German market.

US cable-television operator Time Warner Cable Sports has agreed a three-year regional television deal with college sports’ Mid-American Conference.

US sports broadcaster ESPN will launch SEC Network, a new pay-television sports channel dedicated to college sports’ Southeastern Conference, on August 21, 2014, according to the Orlando Sentinel newspaper.

MP & Silva and Pitch provide the content for Al Jazeera’s expansion into Asia

Cuba has broadcast its first full Major League Baseball game on free-to-air television since 1961, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Canadian multilingual broadcaster OMNI Television will provide an exclusive Mandarin-language broadcast of today’s (Thursday) Toronto Blue Jays game at the Boston Red Sox – the first time an MLB baseball game has been shown in Mandarin in Canada.

The Los Angeles Dodgers will retain more than $6bn (€4.6bn) from their 25-year local rights deal with US broadcaster Time Warner Cable under a “tentative” agreement with the league, a report has claimed.

Owners of the Los Angles Dodgers MLB team, Guggenheim Baseball Management, are being forced to rework their local rights deal with Time Warner Cable, according to the New York Post.

FOOTBALL Football: The CAA Eleven agency agreed two deals in the UK for qualifiers for Uefa Euro 2016 and the 2018 Fifa World Cup

DirecTV Sports Networks, a division of US pay-television provider DirecTV, has agreed a deal to sell a majority stake in its regional sports channel, Root Sports Northwest, to Major League Baseball franchise…

MP & Silva chief explains why channel plan may work for Asia