International Sports Coverage

To make up for BeIN not showing Serie A in the MENA region (partly due to piracy), Libya sport are now pirating the games from Eleven Sports with Arabic commentary added:

Just to say that previously Eurosport had certain packages, but they had effectively pulled back from them, and sub-licenced them to DAZN and Amazon. It sounds as if Amazon is out of live German games then as well.

Serie A / BeIN dispute is over and Serie A is back on all BeIN variations that have the rights - MENA, France, Australia etc.

Some more detail added here - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-25/italian-soccer-nears-deal-to-return-matches-to-tv-after-blackout?sref=Xka7aNox or http://archive.is/DrE3c

Apparently Serie A refunded a portion of the fee BeIN had paid for the rights for Italian football to make up for the loss of their value due to piracy as proved by the WTO report. The Bloomberg article says this was more than the amount Serie A received for the Italian Super Cup being played in Saudi Arabia which is around $8m.

Not sure if it's been widely reported, but F1 rights are changing at the end of this season in Germany, and the new rights round between 2021-2024.

RTL have lost FTA, to Sky Sport Germany. Like here and Italy a dedicated F1 channel will be set up.

All F1, F2, F3 practice, quali and races exclusively live. 4 races per season will be FTA, and 30 min highlights of the race shown on Sky Sport News.

Interestingly, as part of the deal the premium OTT F1TV offering will only be made to existing Sky Sport subscribers. Basic channel will be the default offering in Germany going forward.


RTL have said that they couldn't compete with paying for a new deal as the 'competitor' offered double per season to what they were paying.

I think anyone who thought the change in ownership of the commercial rights holder a few years back would mean the end of exclusive pay TV deals would be disappointed with that one - it was always pointed out that the current U.K./Irl deal was done by Ecclestone right before the sale to Malone. The sport has gone from having mass FTA viewership to being one for the dedicated fans only over a short few years.

CBS All Access granted UEFA Club Competitons rights from 2021-2024, IN ADDITION taking mid contract the rest of the 2018-21 deal from Bleacher Report media (BR) including the remainder of the 2019-20 season matches in August.

If anyone is interested in a bit of behind the scenes, the World Team Tennis tournament -taking place in West Virginia and being broadcast across ESPN, CBS and Tennis Channel and on Facebook over the course of the next three weeks - is being streamed on Fite TV worldwide for $2 USD per day or $20 for the whole season.

The feed being provided to Fite includes all of the things they're doing in the commercial breaks and between ties, for example they're currently doing rehearsals and checking cameras and graphics etc. for CBS Sports' broadcast at 4pm ET (9pm UK).

The commentators are pretending to be further apart than they really are, by being boxed separately on screen, and during rehearsals they talked about not looking at each other when they're on air.

Some images from the coverage

From the first tie which was broadcast on ESPN2, with no ESPN branding on the graphics.







The last capture was taken during a commercial break.

These images went out between the two ties:





The presenter now has a CBS branded microphone.

Before the second tie the commentators discussed not looking at each other once they're on air. You can see how close they are in the second image.



ESPN2 commentators doing the same earlier.


Some CBS graphics on air

By looking at the background its pretty obvious they are next to each other even from that first image!

Some screenshots below of another non-ATP tournament which has just finished in Nice:









Each match is split into 4 quarters of 10 minutes and the player winning when the countdown reaches zero wins that quarter. Then the person who has won the most quarters in the match wins or if its 2-2 then there is a style sudden death period in which the first player to win 2 points in a row wins (which happened in the final).

Wish they'd stop trying to make tennis something it isn't. Also not sure if using the phrase "sudden death" is quite appropriate at the moment.

Love the graphics though, although IMO they've the colours the wrong way round for the winning player.

Video of the normal match graphics from an earlier round of the same tournament here:



There were also "cards" that the players could choose to play during the match too such as stealing serve or preventing the opponent from having a second service.