Eurosport rights...

Just wondering what the deal is with Eurosport, and how they're able to pick up the rights to broadcast big sporting events such as the Olympics alongside the BBC etc.

Is it linked to the EBU, or just the case of the BBC sub licencing events they have the rights too - or something more?

Considering it's impact in Britain at least is minuscule compared to the monster that is Sky Sports, apart from football it has a pretty impressive portfolio of rights, even if they are non-exclusive.

I find it interesting as well, that they show stuff like the snooker and tennis from Queens on their BRITISH Eurosport channel, when British viewers can already get it through the BBC!

How much of British Eurosport is actually only on our version? I'd be sure BE takes alot of the main version of Eurosport.

Eurosport 2 is also slightly regional, as you see them opt on the word British to the Eurosport 2 DOG.

And according to DS Eurosport HD is testing aswell...

[quote="Brekkie"]Just wondering what the deal is with Eurosport, and how they're able to pick up the rights to broadcast big sporting events such as the Olympics alongside the BBC etc.

Is it linked to the EBU, quote]

It's an EBU service.

I'm not sure there are much differences between Eurosport International and British Eurosport. Eurosport's website is frustrating my ability to do so, having picked the UK/IRL version, it won't let my go back to the pick a country place (at least, without clearing my browser's cache and/or cookies). I can't figure out how to get a schedule for Eurosport International English.

However, having compared British Eurosport with Eurosport France and German Eurosport, they all seem to be showing the UEFA U19 Championship and the Tour de France (at a later time in France itself) but only British Eurosport is showing MotoGP, for example.

Does any UK/Irish multichannel TV company still carry Eurosport International? Chorus did, but I think it does so on analogue only though. Everyone else (including NTL Ireland, which has merged with Chorus but still has a seperate analogue & MMDS line-ups) carries British Eurosport.

I doubt it, I think Sky Analogue carried the main version aswell, but it was still there after Sky abandoned Astra 1 in 2001, but I don't think it's there at all now is it?

So if it's linked to the EBU how are they picking up rights to things like the Olympics then.

IIRC, the Olympic rights are sold and divided up through the EBU rather than individual countries (to ensure FTA coverage), but do stations like the BBC get any say in whether Eurosport can cover it. Obviously there would be the incentive of sharing the cost, but I can't see Eurosport's contribution to the cost being significant at all.

With some major sports rights, I think BBC has to over them to a Digital rival (Or they did), which why Euro 2004 was live on British Eurosport and World Cup 2006 was live on UKTV G2.

It still is there but only in analogue. The digital version is FTA but doesnt include English sound.

In fact there are 7 versions of Eurosport International alone on 13E, there are differences particularly when England are playing football matches, one of the vital Euro 2008 qualifiers was shown on Eurosport International, while viewers in this country had to watch it via Sly Sports, essentially the uk version of Eurosport is the poor version of its international brother.

I presume Eurosport's rights are negotiated by their overall holding company ... TF1.

TF1 probably negotiate their rights with secondary and tertiary rights available to Eurosport.

For anyone interested, you can hear the audio from what I believe is the international version of Eurosport here



I'm pretty sure that the word "British" is never taken off the main Eurosport channel DOG, so you can't tell when it's a British opt out or the main version.