Hockey

American Football

Athletics: The Dentsu agency signed a 10-year, €180m (£122m) deal with the International Association of Athletics Federations for the worldwide marketing rights and worldwide television rights outside Eu…
Basketball

Tennis: US network NBC and cable broadcaster ESPN are set to acquire the rights for the Wimbledon tournament in two separate four-year deals, 2008 to 2011
Boxing

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). 

Cricket

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).

Basketball

Ice hockey:  Finnish ice-hockey’s domestic SM-liiga signed a three-year joint-deal with pay-television operator Canal Plus Nordic and free-to-air commercial broadcaster Nelonen worth about €3.7m (£2.5m) a
Hockey

International Hockey Federation is said to have signed its longest, most lucrative television-rights deal ever
Badminton

The International Hockey Federation has dropped sports agency to take its rights in house.

Cricket

Ten Sports have 55-per-cent share of sports channel audience in cable and satellite homes.