November 27 – Serie A’s decision to take its Super Cup to Saudi Arabia could cost the Italian league $500 million in TV rights if beIN Sport follows through on its threat to drop the league from its schedules when the broadcast rights agreement comes up for renewal for the 2021-2024 cycle next year.
November 21 – beIN Sports is to add a new free live streaming channel to its US stable with the launch of beIN Sports XTRA which will debut with selected live games from Spain’s La Liga, France’s Ligue 1 and Turkey’s Super Lig.
November 19 – The broadcast market may be disrupted by piracy and challenger broadcast platforms, but big money for premium product is still available if the £1.2 billion UK pay TV broadcaster BT Sport is paying for the next cycle of Europe’s Champions League is an indicator.
November 14 – The Spanish Football Federation’s (RFEF) who are controversially taking their Super Cup to Saudi in January for the first season of a €120 million three-year deal, have now fallen foul of Spain’s competition authorities over its invitation to tender for rights to the competition.
October 23 – The sports rights geo-political battle being waged in the middle east between Qatari broadcaster beIN Sport and Saudi Arabian-supported channels and broadcast rights interests, has taken a new twist.
By David Owen
October 21 – India’s Reliance Industries is mulling bidding for Indian streaming rights for the English Premier League and other top-notch sports competitions in future. Nita Ambani, a Reliance board member, told the Financial Times: “I would be very interested to get the digital rights of some of these games to be shown on digital in India.”
October 14 – The revelation last week that middle eastern broadcaster beIN Sport will now, as a result of piracy, be treating all its sports rights acquisitions as non-exclusive, and will be dropping prices accordingly, is a wake-up call to football’s rights owners.
By Paul Nicholson
October 8 – The warning signs have been there for a while, the reality may only just be starting to hit home to a football business that is “still sleep-walking to a financial cliff”. Broadcast and media rights revenues that underpinned football’s massive growth are about to burst, and spectacularly so.
October 5 – US broadcast giant ESPN are set to carry a record amount of coverage this weekend for the final round of the regular MLS season.
October 1 – Germany’s Bundesliga, which has been targeting commercial expansion in the US market, has secured a six-year broadcast deal with subscription streaming service ESPN+.
September 20 – The rapid rise of the women’s game and the profile of the Women’s World Cup has prompted the UK government to call for a number of top tier women’s events to be added to the country’s ‘listed’ sports events that must be broadcast in free-to-air television.
By Paul Nicholson
September 17 – Football rights owners have issued another demand to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, satellite distributor Arabsat and IPTV platforms to stop the broadcast of pirate TV channel beoutQ that has been stealing their rights and rebroadcasting across the region.
September 11 – The troubled UK TV deal for LaLiga’s live broadcast rights has now found a multi-platform solution with Premier Sports in a deal that will see live matches on Premier Sports 1 and 2, as well as LaLigaTV as a standalone channel as part of the Premier Sports package.
August 28 – US sports broadcaster ESPN is taking a deeper step into domestic soccer with a new three-year deal the United Soccer League (USL) which will see it triple its coverage of the league.
August 19 – The US women’s national team may hold the attention and hearts of the nation but their women’s professional league has never enjoyed anything like the same profile. A new deal with ESPN could be a step towards changing that.