Cricket

90-day period of exclusive talks for England & Wales, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe rights exhausted

Pan-Asian broadcaster in tough talks over continued distribution of its channels in Thailand, following loss of English Premier League football rights to UBC

Viewer numbers fall but audience share increases during unseasonably hot weather

Tennis: Asian broadcaster Ten Sports sublicensed coverage of the finals of this year’s French Open tournament to rival pay-operator Zee Sports.

The next television rights tender for Indian cricket is likely to be delayed

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…

The International Cricket Council will start talks at the end of this month about a new deal for its commercial rights

Football:  Italian pay-television operator Sky Italia acquired the pay-television rights to all 64 matches of the 2006 World Cup, 39 of which it will show exclusively, in a deal with the Infront agency.  Sky is paying an estimated €40m (£27.3m) for the rights.  The deal also includes the rights to this year’s Fifa Confederations Cup, the Fifa World Youth Championships and the 16 26-minute preview programmes produced by Infront (page 1).

Broadcaster to help West Indies Cricket Board sell rights elsewhere

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.

Global Cricket Corporation will be handicapped when it bids for the next round of rights.

Cricket: Indian channel Zee Sports acquired the worldwide television, radio and broadband rights to 25 one-day internationals featuring India to be played at neutral venues around the world in the next five years.

Changes sought to make rights easier to sell on

The games may be great, but timing hits key audience

Cricket Australia has surprised television sports experts by not going out to tender when it awarded exclusive rights for Australian cricket to Nine network

Cricket:  Indian pay-television broadcaster Sony Entertainment Television acquired the international rights to this month’s India v Pakistan tour for $11.5m (£6m/€8.7m).