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.
August 7 – The English FA will launch a new over-the-top platform that will provide free live coverage of every Women’s Super League game from the start of the 2019/20 season.
By Paul Nicholson
August 5 – The court filing in Trinidad by Jack Warner claiming that the Trinidad and Tobago FA owes him TT$15,761,003 ($2.3 million) has sparked the re-opening of an old claim by Selby Browne and his CSTN broadcast company over Caribbean TV rights – rights that Warner sold to the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) for $4.25 million.
By Osasu Obayiuwana
August 5 – beIN Sports, the international pay-tv broadcaster, financed by the government of Qatar, is officially the number one financial partner of the Confederation of African Football (CAF).
August 1 – La Liga has not found a home for its broadcasting rights in the UK and Ireland for the 2019/20 season, leaving the big kick off in August in doubt for fans across the UK.
By Paul Nicholson
July 31 – Football’s most powerful governing bodies and rights holders have issued the largest combined statement to date condemning the theft of their broadcast rights by pirate broadcaster beoutQ and “requesting” the Saudi Arabian (KSA) government to immediately take “swift and decisive” action.
July 22 – The changes taking place in the ‘disrupted’ sports TV market are highlighted in a new analysis that finds that 23% of the world’s top leagues and federations now have their own OTT streaming services.
July 22 – Amazon Prime Video has bought the series ‘All or Nothing’ featuring Brazil’s 2019 Copa America win on home soil, TV sales agency Pitch International has announced.
July 18 – Manchester City has launched its own streaming service, Man City for TV, for fans globally with a free month’s trial before pricing goes to £1.99 per month.
July 18 – Irish fans of the English Premier League who rely on illegal internet streams to watch matches may soon no longer have access.
July 17 – British public broadcaster BBC has secured the broadcasting rights for the 2021 UEFA Women’s European Championship, which England will host.
July 9 – Saudi-based broadcaster beoutQ has continued its theft of live broadcast rights, tacitly backed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and more overtly backed by Arabsat. It has stolen all 36 group matches of CAF’s Total Africa Cup of Nations.
June 28 – Liverpool are to show their six pre-season matches live on their own digital broadcast channels LFCTV and LFCTV GO.
By Paul Nicholson
June 15 – It would not be a major football tournament these days if it wasn’t being stolen for television by a Saudi-based broadcaster. The country that doesn’t allow women in its stadiums is nevertheless taking the women’s World Cup so seriously that it is allowing the piracy of every game from France 2019 on the beoutQ channels.
June 14 – The CEO of Italy’s Serie A has issued a powerful endorsement of beIN Sports in its battle against the copyright theft of Saudi Arabian-based BeoutQ that has been stealing the Qatari broadcasters’ live broadcasts and retransmitting on its own networks.