By Samindra Kunti
March 24 – The Italian agency MP & Silva is tendering the TV rights of the Belgian Pro League for the next three seasons. Fast developing broadcaster Eleven Sports is keen on acquiring the rights, a deal which would shake up the market for the league’s rights.
By Paul Nicholson
March 17 – It has been a busy week in the sports broadcast market with UK Culture Secretary Karen Bradley referred 21st Century Fox’s £11.7 billion bid for full control of Sky to communications regulator Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority – Sky are the Premier League’s dominant TV partner. In France, Qatari owners have pumped in another €600 million into beIN Sports to cope with losses believed to at more than 1 billion.
March 7 – Having complained about the ever-inflating cost of broadcast rights to football, BT Sport has stumped up a huge £1.18 billion for UEFA Champions League rights that will see the world’s leading club competition exclusively on the pay broadcaster in the UK for the three seasons from 2018-19 to 2020-21.
February 15 – Mexico’s Liga MX will hit the Facebook Live platform with Univision this weekend at the start of a new broadcast deal that will see 46 matches, including playoff games, streamed live.
February 10 – Manchester United are to launch a premium streaming app targeting fans outside the UK with the club’s MUTV channel. The app will be available in 160 countries with pricing levels between £1.49 and £4.99.
January 26 – Media rights to broadcast England’s national team matches from 2018 until 2022 have been split between subscription and free-to-air channels. No figure has been released for the deal which was done under the new rights selling regime that consolidates all national federation rights into a single UEFA-backed sales agency.
November 22 – Digiturk, the Turkish digital TV platform has retained the broadcast right to the Turkish Super League in a $3 billion five year deal – $600 million a year – that is almost double the previous amount Digiturk paid in 2010 in a one-year deal that was extended for three years in 2011.
November 18 – Taking advantage of the burgeoning Chinese market, the English Premier League has sold its television rights in the country to streaming service PPTV for a staggering $700 million (£565 million), according to a number of reports in the UK and Asia.
November 16 – The biggest shake-up in the English professional football pyramid since the Premier League was set up in 1992 has been scrapped because of a calendar clash between the various parties running the national game.
By Paul Nicholson
November 14 – FOX Sport in the US have renewed their Gold Cup TV deal with North, Central American and Caribbean confederation CONCACAF. The new deal secures them the rights to the 2017 and 2019 tournaments.
November 1 – Manchester City have continued their rapid digital expansion with the launch of a new app for Amazon Fire TV allowing users to stream CityTV videos directly on to a connected TV via the Amazon platform.
October 25 – The English FA has confirmed an £820 million six-season international broadcast rights deal for its FA Cup domestic competition, the oldest club competition in world football.
October 11 – FIFA has begun the sales process for the broadcast rights to the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, launching an invitation to tender (ITT) for the UK media rights.
September 16 – German pay-TV sports network Sky Deutschland has announced it will add a new web channel that will focus on video content, skysport.de.
August 24 – Chinese broadcaster LeSports is testing the pay-per-view model on broadcasts of some of Italy’s Serie A matches in China.