International Sports Coverage

Big news in Australia where Channel Nine have lost the rights to Australian cricket after 40 years. Foxtel and 7 the new rights holders.



http://www.news.com.au/sport/breaking-news/foxtel-ceo-promises-cricket-fans-he-will-revolutionise-tv-cricket-like-never-before/news-story/6be8ed01a0c66a2a31cf584bf9b19e23

Nine still have rights to the next Ashes in England and the next World Cup (also in England in 2019).

Inevitable after Nine poached the summer tennis rights from 7 earlier in the year.

Seven taking much more than I thought - assumed the Big Bash coverage, with no legal FTA protection, would be much more limited.

Be interesting to see now if Seven try to offload the Aussie open a year early as the contracts overlap.

P.S. See Foxtel saying they'll air it ad free - do Sky?

What'll become of Daddles then?

They don't miss any action but show an advert after ever couple of overs and a couple of adverts after each wicket plus normal advert breaks at lunch/tea etc.

So basically as C4 did.

Found buried in the press release, and worth pointing out that Australia home test matches will be show live by Fox Sports Cricket and 7 simultaneously.

Was wondering if it may have been a similar C4/Sky deal where live coverage of one test per series went behind the pay wall exclusively.

Shame for Channel Nine though, because pretty much everything you see on televised cricket coverage has that DNA back to them and the World Series Cricket coverage at the back end of the 1970's.

Hardly buried - it is the headline of the deal. Home test matches have to be FTA in Australia.

In the end Nine wanted out and snatching the tennis means they could get out without being seen as losers in the deal. They were losing $30-$40m a year on their cricket coverage and their financial backers had quite publicly said that they'd be better off letting it go.

So do ODIs, though - and all home Aus international matches have been live on 9 till now.

Apparently there’s a loophole in the law which means 7 can buy the ODI rights then announce that they don’t wish to screen them and are thus sublicensing them to Foxtel.

Whilst there are parallels here to the 1999 Sky/C4 deal (what with a longstanding FTA broadcaster losing out to a newcomer with a pay network becoming more involved), it was actually longer ago (in 1995) that England home ODIs went to Sky, so Australia are still well ahead of England when it comes to the history.

Keys and Gray have spent the first 10 minutes of tonights BeIn Sports EPL (I am a legally paying subscriber btw) coverage talking about this:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/sports/bein-sports-qatar-beoutq.html#click=https://t.co/9wD61Ud3tk

Saudi backed BeOUTq Sport have been bootlegging BeIn Sports via satellite and streaming for the last 10 months as part of the Saudi/Qatar dispute.

So it's every Kodi rebroadcaster ever just on a larger scale but backed by US oil dollars?

Virgin Media / TV3 secure UEFACL / UEFAEL rights in Ireland for the 2018-21 Cycle

Virgin Media and @TV3Ireland have secured the rights to all UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League matches for the next three years and live rights to 327 matches per season.https://t.co/En44tBhSoV
1/3 pic.twitter.com/JiGwqqNamH

— Virgin Media One (@VirginMedia_One) May 15, 2018

RTE retain first choice of Tuesday Match

Great news as @RTEsport
secures first choice of Tuesday matches in #UCL for next three seasons #RTEsoccer https://t.co/gUf2kMmFjz

— RTÉ Soccer (@RTEsoccer) May 15, 2018