The Sport Thread

One would asssume the PLP Matchday ground coverage with Highlights and stats will fill up the half time - unless BT/Sunset and Vine do a 'NBCSN last day of the premiership' style show, where the central studio feed, is shown across all games at half time.

I wondered who would actually produce the coverage for Amazon Prime. It could only be three suppliers.
BT Sport, Sky Sports or IMG. Given IMG's existing relationship with Prime over providing Tennis coverage technicals (I know production sits with Whisper Films for the US Open), I would have thought they would have got the contract.

Oh great Premier League pixel vision that really is great thinking it will probably be 25 frames per second contributing to jittervision.

BT Sport win rights for IPL Cricket in 2019

It's been about the IPL Cricket. Does it even rate that well?

I think it might. When it was on Sky, often they would show the IPL then the same day, show an English domestic one day match. IPL first aired on ITV, then went to Sky.

The problem with the IPL has been the legitimacy of the competition over the most recent seasons. Some corruption accusations surrounding the clubs / franchises (call them whatever you like) some not so minor too. This has had some impact on recruitment so this run-through could be pivotal for the future well being or otherwise of the event.

It's also on STAR Gold which is part of the basic pack on Sky or the £12 per month Mela pack on Virgin. BT are probably banking on not many people knowing it's also on this channel.

Is the commentary on STAR Gold not in Hindi? If so, I'd imagine that perhaps BT might also see value in providing an English-language commentary.

IPL. Just appears to be a ligit money laundering exercise masquerading as sport.

But, back to TV rights. Last season Sky said they had signed a 'multi year rights deal' for the IPL. So, the 2019 season turns up on BT Sport.

So, presumably the 'rights' Sky signed last year were UK sub-licenced from Star, and now the Murdoch thin tielines between the two broadcasters have been cut - the multi year deal was been thrown in the bin, and it went back out to the market?

I occasionally joke that working in sports broadcasting is much more predictable than news, as you don't tend to get extra work sprung on you - football matches don't appear out of thin air in the same way that, say, natural disasters do. But I was last in work on Tuesday and there was absolutely no hint that this was going to be in the schedules. Sports rights are a strange beast.

(I suspect BT are probably going to use the same model as they did for this year's Aussie cricket: largely taking the host feed but with an out-of-vision presenter to link it together and chuck in the occasional local promo/cover up the more egregious product placement)

Didn't realise it was so last minute. I guess they got them pretty cheaply then.

I'm not a cricket fan but I'd guess the Big Bash has the broader appeal now. The ECB, who invented the format, screwed up big time by not striking whilst the Twenty20 iron was hot. They have their 100 Ball format launching next year I think but seems little demand for another shortened form of the game.

Incidentally BBC TMS has picked up last minute audio rights as well.