August 3 – England’s Premier League, and Spain’s LaLiga have both announced new deals in China suggesting that there may be a thawing in football relationships with the country that has pretty much closed its doors to outside football influence.
July 27 – Micro-payment streaming platform Recast has launched a Manchester City channel that is available globally and kicked off with the club’s friendly against Bayern Munich last weekend in Green Bay.
July 21 – Turkish media company Saran, who had secured the Turkish SuperLig roghts only to have them stripped and returned to late and higher bidding beIN Sports/Digiturk, have secured LaLiga rights.
July 1 – With beIN Sports pulling out of the bids for Serie A broadcast rights, the Italian league and its chief executive Luigi De Servio has awarded the rights to Abu Dhabi Media group in a deal that is less than beIN were offering before they pulled out.
By Paul Nicholson
June 30 – Just as Serie A looked to have repaired bridges with beIN Sports for its broadcast rights in the Middle East and Africa, the league’s chief executive Luigi De Servio has surprisingly cast doubts on a potential deal brokered by AS Roma that could bring the league and the broadcaster back into alignment.
June 24 – After a fraught, and often bitterly chaotic, broadcast rights tender process in Turkey, beIN SPORTS has agreed a two-year deal as the exclusive domestic broadcaster of the Turkish Süper Lig in Turkey.
June 23 – The trend to longer term broadcast deals and away from three-year licensing agreements has been re-emphsised in Spain.
June 15 – Apple has taken its first step into live football broadcasting agreeing a deal that will see the Apple TV app become the exclusive platform for every MLS match.
June 8 – FIFA has expanded its FIFA+ streaming platform with the addition of Japanese, Korean, Italian and Bahasa languages.
May 19 – Following on from the announcement of an MoU with Mexico’s Liga MX, Germany’s Bundesliga has reinforced its position in Mexico and Central America with a four-year extension to its TV deal with subscription broadcaster SKY Mexico.
May 16 – US sports broadcaster Fox has secured another two seasons of neighbouring Canada’s men’s and women’s football.
April 29 – The UK government has added the FIFA Women’s World Cup and the UEFA European Women’s Championship to its ‘listed’ events, ensuring the tournaments will remain available for free-to-air television broadcasters.
April 14 – More detail of the new streamed FIFA+ OTT broadcast channel has been released with the ELEVEN media group announced it is supporting the service with bth production and rights.
April 5 – beIN Media Group is rebuilding its broadcast relationship with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) piece-by-piece with an agreement to extend it rights to cover the 2022 AFC Champions League and AFC Cup.
March 21 – beIN SPORTS will launch four new dedicated channels for the 12 remaining matches of the the AFC World Cup 2022 qualifiers that will be played over two match days.