Football

Sportfive has postponed the selling of Euro 2008 pay-television rights in the Netherlands after the only bidder offered less than €500,000.

German pay-television company Premiere got its last orders from the Bundesliga when it failed to win the league’s rights for public-place viewing.

Strong competition for the Euro 2008 rights in France should lead to a steep increase in rights fees because of the rivalry among the country’s terrestrial broadcasters.

The Premier League’s £171.6 million deal with the BBC takes the league’s audiovisual-rights income to more than £680 million.

Pay-television operator British Sky Broadcasting is considering launching a Sky Sports channel on the digital-terrestrial service Freeview.

Football: Fifa signed deals across Europe for the the World Cup in 2010 worth an overall €1bn (£666m).  In some territories it also signed deals for the 2014 World Cup.  T

The women’s Euro 2005 football tournament last month attracted the biggest football television audiences of the year in Sweden and Norway

Italian state broadcaster Rai won the live, free-to-air rights for football’s Champions League, taking them from commercial rival Mediaset

Portuguese pay-television channel Sport TV acquired the rights for football’s 2006 World Cup

Japanese commercial broadcaster TV Asahi is being asked to pay at least twice as much to extend its present deal for the rights for the Asian Football Confederation

The loss of World Cup rights is a major blow for the Infront agency

FIFA surprised by what it thought was a cautious approach by bidding agencies.

Fifa has agreed or is in the process of agreeing deals for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups in the top five European television countries

Surprise close to FIFA bidding process

Horseracing:  UK commercial broadcaster Channel 4 signed a one-year deal to continue its horseracing coverage in 2006 after the horseracing and betting industries agreed to pay the channel £4.95m (€7.4m). 

Football:  Norwegian commercial channel TV2 an telecoms company Telenor acquired the rights to all Norwegian football in a record NKr1bn (£85m/€127m) deal (page 1)

Spanish television’s near-black-out of the final of football’s domestic cup competition, the Copa del Rey, last weekend underlined a major flaw in Spanish listed-events legislation

Pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus won the rights for 15 of the 20 clubs in Italy’s Serie A football league last week