By Paul Nicholson
May 14 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has said that it has not cancelled its TV rights agreement with beIN Sports and that the broadcaster, it said in a statement, “remains a valued commercial partner of the AFC”.
May 14 – Major League Soccer (MLS) has opened up a new broadcast content channel with the announcement of the launch on the Pluto TV free streaming service of its own channel (Ch. 203).
May 13 – The on-going battle against rogue Saudi Arabia-based pirate broadcaster BeoutQ that has seen the Saudi channel steal thousands of hours of sports and entertainment programming is causing government concern with a committee of UK Parliamentary MPs now calling for a “robust attack” on the channel.
May 10 – Facebook, which is gradually becoming a broadcast rights competitor for premium tier live football rights, has signed a content deal with Conmebol for this Summer’s Copa America in Brazil.
April 25 – LaLiga, in co-operation with Denmark’s RettighedsAlliancen, scored a major victory in the battle against broadcast pirate with a Danish court ruling that sites offering illegal streams of live sport should be blocked.
April 18 – Mediaset are on the verge of wrestling the free-to-air rights for the Champions League from Italian state broadcaster RAI in a two-year deal with Sky Italia.
April 15 – LaLiga has extended its virtual perimeter and virtual goal-side advertising deal with the UK’s Interregional Sports Group (ISG). The deal was concluded via LaLiga’s media agency MediaPro.
By Paul Nicholson
April 16 – The animosity between the Spanish FA (RFEF) and LaLiga has found a new broadcast battleground to play out.
March 27 – Christian Seifert, chief executive of the Bundesliga, has called into question the league’s ‘no single buyer’ broadcasting rule which was introduced ahead of the current cycle that ends in 2021 and is designed to stop a single broadcaster from purchasing domestic rights to show all games from Germany’s top two divisions.
March 27 – LaLiga has launched its OTT streaming service, LaLigaSportsTV, which offers fans coverage of live LaLiga 1|2|3 content, as well as other Spanish sports.
March 19 – The Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) has teamed up with social media platform Twitter in a broadcast deal for the Brazilian women’s top flight, the 2019 Campeonato Brasileiro de Futebol Feminino.
By Paul Nicholson
March 13 – The streaming of the Asian Champions League match involving Saudi Arabia’s Al Ahli Saudi away to Uzbekistan’s Pakhator was watched by close to 1 million people in Saudi Arabia on the AFC’s YouTube and Facebook Live channels.
By Paul Nicholson
March 12 – Football fans in Saudi Arabia will be able to watch tonight’s Champions League match involving Al Ahli Saudi FC away to Uzbekistan’s Pakhator FC legally and without having to resort to beoutQ’s piracy of BeIN Sport’s broadcast.
March 6 – Sports streaming specialist mycujoo has expanded its South American footprint with the signing of its 10th Brazilian state federation that will see up to 300 matches streamed over the next two years
March 5 – ESPN has replaced Fox Sports as the Major League Soccer Spanish-language rights holder in Latin America and the Caribbean as part of a four-year deal until 2022.