Baseball

Agency is close to deals for basketball and motorsport, plans aggressive bids for French and German football

Baseball: America’s Major League Baseball signed seven-year deals with US national network Fox, extending its present contract but for a reduced amount of coverage, and with cable network TBS for a package of Sunday and post-season games.

A new deal for French Ligue 1 football is likely to be the biggest television-rights deal of 2008

The NBA’s renewal of its domestic television rights deals was the largest broadcast rights deal agreed in 2007

Cricket: Asian pay-broadcaster Zee Sports acquired the Indian cable and satellite rights to India’s three-Test series against Sri Lanka in a deal with the newly elected Board of Control for Cricket in India

American Football: Canadian commercial broadcaster CTV and cable sports broadcaster Rogers Sportsnet acquired the Canadian rights to NFL football for the three years from 2008 to 2010, paying a combined…

Baseball: US cable broadcaster ESPN renewed its long-term deal for Major League Baseball, paying $2.368bn (£1.3bn/€1.9bn) over eight years, from 2006 to 2013.

Figure Skating: US network NBC acquired the rights for US figure skating in a three-year deal with the US Figure Skating Association, covering the national championships and the international Skate America…

Major League Baseball is considering the launch of its own cable network to broadcast games covered by its main television-rights package.

Ice hockey: Canadian public-service broadcaster CBC retained the rights for live coverage of the US National Hockey League in a six-year deal that will keep its flagship Hockey Night in Canada programme…

Olympics: Brazilian free-to-air broadcaster TV Record acquired the Brazilian media rights across all platforms for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and the 2012 Olympics Games in London in a $60m (£31m/€45m) de…

Football: French commercial broad-caster TF1 agreed a deal with the Infront agency for the pay-television rights for the 2006 World Cup and sublicensed them to pay-broadcaster Canal Plus and its own cable and satellite channel Eurosport.

American football:  US network NBC acquired the so-called “network package” of American football’s National Football League rights, the main package of 23 matches per season, paying $600m (£316m/€465m) a year ov…

Canadian public-service broadcaster CBC is expected to renew its long-standing rights deal with US ice-hockey’s National Hockey League, although it will have to pay more and share the most attractive m…

Commonwealth Games:  UK public-service broadcaster the BBC acquired the rights to the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in a deal with the Fastrack agency, which is selling the rights on behalf of the organisers.

Motorsport: German pay-broad-caster Premiere acquired the exclusive live rights for motor racing’s Nascar and Indycar series for the 2006 season.