Football
Premier League off to a good start
Pay-per-view audiences for English football’s Premier League are up by 27 per cent for the opening matches of the season.
Setanta hangs on until Bundesliga price is slashed
Setanta last week renewed its deal for German football’s Bundesliga for a further three years.
Strong bidding for Euro 2008
Seventeen or more agencies and broadcasters have submitted bids to Uefa, European football’s governing body, for the Euro 2008 rights outside Europe.
Final deals for Serie A will lead to row with government
Italy’s troubled telecoms giant, Telecom Italia, is on a collision course with the government over deals it agreed with five Serie A clubs.
TV RIGHTS CLIPS 2: Japanese and other football, golf and tennis
Football: Japanese pay-television operator J Sports acquired the rights to Japan’s top-tier J-League in a five-year deal from 2007 to 2011.
TV RIGHTS CLIPS 1: Serie B, Spanish, Champions League football
Football: The threatened delay to the start of the Serie B season in Italy was averted when Rupert Murdoch’s satellite platform, Sky Italia, signed a last-minute, one-season deal to broadcast all Serie B matches live.
Poor viewing won’t help Euro athletics lift fees
Poor viewing for the European athletics championships in Gothenburg will not help the European Athletics Association get the fee increase it is trying to get.
Match-by-match route to disaster
The Belgian football association's decision to sell the Flemish television rights of national team matches on a match-by-match basis has spectacularly backfired.
J-League holds on to fees, but gets less free-to-air
Japanese professional football’s J-League has agreed a new television-rights deal with a new broadcaster.
War of egos fuels Saudi football fees
A bidding war between Arab Radio and Television and Orbit has resulted in an eight-fold increase in television rights fees for Saudi Arabia’s domestic football league.
La Liga is No.2 worldwide league – if only for now
International rights sales for Spanish football’s La Liga are likely to bring in more than €100 million a year.
Murdoch’s Indian TV deal could herald ESS break-up
The deal agreed by Star Television to distribute the sports channels of the Nimbus agency could herald the death of ESPN Star Sports.
TV RIGHTS CLIPS 2: Football, basketball, golf and surfing
Football: Portuguese public-service broadcaster RTP acquired the rights to the national team’s Euro 2008 home qualifiers and friendlies in a two-year deal, 2006-07 to 2007-08, with the Olivedesportos agency
Royal League may lose its crown as viewers turn off
The board of the Scandinavian Royal League will meet next week to discuss the trend of falling television audiences that threaten the tournament’s future.
RTP forced to lift fees to retain Portuguese team
The Portuguese national team is the latest football property to benefit from the country’s commercial broad-casters’ new interest in sports rights.
Plenty to play for before Italy kicks off season
The Italian match-fixing scandal is continuing to sow confusion in the television-rights market.
Turkey gambles on Euro despite World Cup losses
Turkish commercial broadcaster ATV continued its spending spree on top football.
Sportfive success in Italy may be hard act to follow
The Sportfive agency faces difficult talks in the remaining four big European markets where it has yet to sell the rights for football’s 2008 European Championship.