By Paul Nicholson
August 3 – Any doubts that Facebook wasn’t preparing a major broadcast assault in the world’s biggest sport can be dispelled with the social media giant tonight making Premier League history with the streaming of a Wayne Rooney’s testimonial match.
August 2 – With the first round of Scotiabank Champions League fixtures kicking off the 2016-17 season tonight with Trinidad’s Central at home to Canada’s Vancouver Whitecaps and Mexico’s Pachuca at home to Honduras’ Olympia, CONCACAF has announced a significantly expanded Spanish-language TV deal in the US with Univision.
July 29 – Bhutan has become the first of the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) member associations to embrace the new Live Streaming Platform with the AFC’s partner mycujoo.
By Paul Nicholson
July 29 – As if on cue, as Facebook’s millionaire founder Mark Zuckerburg (pictured) announced that the social media giant’s future would be ‘video’, so Liverpool launched their third kit via a Facebook Livestream directly from Facebook Headquarters in San Francisco.
July 26 – Premier League Tottenham Hotspur have built on their pre-season tour to Australia with the signing of a three-year deal with Australian broadcaster Foxtel.
July 13 – Premier League Crystal Palace, currently on pre-season tour in the US, will have their second of three friendly matches streamed live on Facebook.
July 8 – Car manufacturer Nissan has expanded its football media sponsorship as the weekend sponsor of Sky Sports’ Premier League action in a three-year partnership.
June 21 – The Premier League has renewed its TV production partnership with IMG that sees more than 200,000 hours of programming broadcast globally. The two will continue to operate via Premier League Productions (PLP) for another three seasons to the end of 2018/19.
June 13 – French national broadcaster TF1 and M6 are locked in a battle to secure the TV rights for France’s matches in the 2018-2022 cycle.
By Tom Parsons
May 12 – BT Sport has announced it will show the Champions League and Europa League finals free-to-air on its YouTube channel and freeview channel after recent criticism about the broadcaster’s low viewing figures for European football on the pay channels.
By Paul Nicholson
May 11 – Manchester City has taken a deep media step into the opportunities of Virtual Reality with a test of last weekend’s game against Arsenal that was broadcast to a select group of fans in London, New York and Melbourne.
April 14 – For the first time, Germany’s cartel office has approved a plan to stop any one single pay-TV broadcaster from buying up live television rights for top-flight games, mirroring the UK where Sky and BT Sport share Premier League live coverage.
March 31 – Milan’s Serie A giant, Internazionale, has today launched the Inter Channel on smart phones and tablets into the Indonesian market. Indosat is the second biggest mobile phone operator in Indonesia with 70 million customers.
March 16 – Virtually Live teamed up with STATS LLC to test their virtual reality technology for the first time on a European football match in Europe covering the Scottish League Cup final on March 13 at Hampden Park – Ross County beat Hibernian 2-1.
By Paul Nicholson
March 10 – A sign that the broadcast sales of sports rights is shifting away from traditional platform sales to embrace the digital distribution options more fully can be seen from the partnership just announced by MP & Silva with Simplestream.