June 14 – UEFA has officially unveiled its new Over The Top (OTT) streaming platform – UEFA.tv – a bespoke platform built for the governing body that will be a mix of archive content and current UEFA competitions.
June 11 – Fly-on-the-wall documentaries charting the seasons (and generally struggles) of fallen giants battling to return to former glories makes popular television. English Championship club Leeds United look set to become the latest English club to feature in an Amazon documentary series.
May 30 – BeIN Sports will broadcast the Women’s World Cup after striking a deal with FIFA to air the tournament in more than 30 countries across Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
By Paul Nicholson
May 22 – Italian competition regulators have ruled that Serie A missed out on international broadcast revenue because agents MP & Silva, B4 Capital and IMG fixed the acquisition price of the rights from the league over three rights cycles from 2008 to 2017.
May 17 – beIN Sports, at loggerheads in Asia over its pan-regional broadcast rights deal, has expanded its portfolio of South American rights with the addition of this year’s Copa América.
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.