The Sport Thread

It's nothing new. S4C have provided additional coverage for things like World and Welsh Open snooker, Six Nations and World Cup rugby, Welsh football etc. for years.

This is a different kettle of fish though.

Only slightly in that the rights were gained ex-post facto. The actual set up is identical.

Incidentally how excited did that commentator get then? All-Welsh final is beckoning.... will S4C bid for that too?

I guess the deal would be done with Premier Sports and I guess they can probably make more money out of on selling the rights than they do from exclusive rights. I'm sure I read something a few months back where the deal was essentially that Premier Sports paid I think a fixed fee and then so much for hitting subscription targets or something, but the Conference clubs hadn't seen anything beyond the initial fixed fee.

EDIT: Premier pay £5000 to the home team, £1000 to the away team then are supposed to pay 50% of subscription revenue after costs, but that equalled 50% of nothing.

Yes, that's correct. My team (Dartford) had two televised games scheduled for this year and from the sounds of things, it doesn't sound like subscriber numbers have been particularly high. Our first match was shown as part of a free-view weekend anyway (so no subscriber bonus for us) and the second one was cancelled at short notice due to the wintery March weather.

Even as the fan of a Conference side, there's very little incentive to subscribe. One game a week, almost exclusively showing one of the top 6 teams or so only, no highlights, no supporting programming... the coverage itself was good, but unless your team was featured it isn't worth the money.

BT reportedly set to snatch MotoGP rights from the BBC:
http://www.cable.co.uk/news/bt-sport-to-pinch-bbcs-motogp-live-rights-801579294/

Another blow to BBC Sport - could mean even more weekends with no live action at all. BT Sport also expected to announce more details in the next week or so about their sports channels.

Indeed, and for the first time it shows BT Sport are prepared to go after rights that are currently with free to air broadcasters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ShIHb3kY3CI

Oh dear!

... and they have put out a statement this morning

Our reporter Gabriel Clarke managed to land an unexpected interview with Jose Mourinho with only two minutes left before the end of last night's Champions League programme on ITV.

At that stage it was too late to arrange an overrun of the broadcast beyond the allotted time. However, in a very tight, live situation, we showed as much as we possibly could of their exchange to viewers.


from ……..

SPORT on ITV.COM
01-May-2013 @ 11:48

A "late interview" and yet they were ready with their own interview backdrop in a country that didn't have an English side playing.

They have that every time they're doing an all-foreign game, so do all the other international broadcasters too, no doubt, and they'd done another interview a few minutes earlier. Presumably the managers have obligations for Spanish and German TV and then whoever's left gets a free-for-all, and they managed to grab him before they went off air.

This is a non-story, though, why would he announce where he's going in the middle of an interview with ITV? Unless he's massive mates with Gabriel Clarke, what does it matter to him? He didn't say it on Sky or in the press conference either.

I can assure you neither RTÉ or TV3 have Champions League interview back drops.
Incidentally, who's running the host transmission of the final? ITV, Sky or someone else?