Champions League Tops Ratings In Italy

UEFA Champions League football action again led the Italian ratings for public broadcaster RAI on Wednesday.

The match between Tottenham Hotspur and Inter Milan (Spurs won 1-0) on RAI 1 pulled 4.535 million viewers with a share of 17.7%, easily the best viewing numbers of the night.

In The Netherlands, the Champions League completed a Tuesday-Wednesday double win for Veronica. PSV’s match versus FC Barcelona was the top programme of the day other than the nightly news. Barca’s 2-1 victory over PSV drew 1.712 million viewers and a share of 28.3%.

On Tuesday, the Ajax match did 1.713 million viewers and a share of 28.1%.

Ajax Win Tops Dutch Ratings

Two of Europe’s most popular football teams, flagship attractions in their home markets, were in action last night in the UEFA Champions League with very different viewing numbers relative to the size of their potential audiences.

In Germany, Bayern Munich’s 5-1 win over Benfica was on pay provider Sky Deutschland. It pulled 640,000 viewers and a 2.4% market share.

In The Netherlands, with only one fifth of the population of Germany, the match between AEK Athens and Ajax on free-to-view Veronica attracted 1.713 million viewers and a share of 28.1%.

Ajax’s 2-0 victory ranked number one of all programmes of the day.

In Germany, Sky also carried five other Champions League matches in parallel to the Bayern game, with an audience of 390,000 viewers.

PDC Partners Betfred For Darts World Matchplay

Professional darts association, the PDC, has confirmed Betfred as the ‘official title sponsor’ for its ‘World Matchplay’ tournament.

Held every July at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool (Lancashire), the competition is the PDC’s second longest-running pro darts event (first staged 1994).

Confirming Betfred as title sponsor for the next three years, the PDC states that from 2019, the ‘Betfred World Matchplay’ will have a record prize pool of £700,000 ($892,822), an increase of circa £200,000 ($255,092) on previous tournaments. With the support of Betfred, PDC Chairman Barry Hearn anticipates that 2019 will be the biggest edition of World Matchplay darts, with PDC’s leading 32 athletes competing at Blackpool’s Winter Gardens.

“I couldn’t be happier to see Betfred involved in one of the biggest in events in the darts calendar,” said PDC Chairman Barry Hearn.

“We had committed to increasing prize money across the PDC circuit, and this announcement of an increase for the Betfred World Matchplay will be followed by more good news for players in the coming weeks!”

College Football Rules Saturday Evening

The college gridiron battle between USC and Notre Dame on ABC easily won the American primetime ratings on Saturday.

The game, traditionally played on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, scored a 1.7 average rating among in adults 18-49 with 6.65 million viewers from 8 pm-11 pm.

It beat the National Dog Show on NBC from 8 pm-10 pm, which had 2.73 million viewers and scored a 0.4 rating in the 18-49 group.

FOX’s competing broadcast of the Oklahoma State vs. TCU game also scored grabbed a 0.4 average in that demographic, even though it had a million fewer viewers (with 1.71 million).

Salah Wins Dubai Creative Award

Liverpool FC’s Egyptian star Mohamed Salah was awarded the Outstanding Arab Athlete Award in the 10th Edition of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Creative Sports Award announced in Dubai today.

A number of local sports personalities were among the other winners, including Manchester City FC Chairman H.E. Khaldoon Khalifa Al- Mubarak, who received the Local Sports Personality Award in appreciation of his efforts in strengthening the status of the UAE in global sport.

The Arab Sports Personality Award was given to H.E. Turki Al-Sheikh from Saudi Arabia for his efforts as Chairman of that nation’s General Sports Authority, the Saudi Olympic Committee, the Union of Arab Football Associations, and the Islamic Solidarity Sports Federation.

There were 353 Award submissions, an increase of 19% from the previous edition. The number of Arab submissions rose to 241, up by 31%.

H.H Sheikh Ahmed Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of the UAE National Olympic Committee, is President of the Award.

F1 Still Wins For RTL But Not Like Before

The Formula 1 finale in Abu Dhabi on Sunday topped the afternoon viewing stakes in Germany for RTL but the audience was way down from the German heyday of the popularity of the series.

RTL pulled 4.23 million viewers for Lewis Hamilton’s victory with a market share of 24.5%. Eight years ago, the win by Sebastian Vettel (who was second yesterday) pulled 10.27 million for the last race of the season.

In Italy, Sky Italia served up a triple play of the race. On its digital terrestrial channel TV8, the Abu Dhabi GP had 1.585 million viewers and a share of 9.1%. On Sky Sport F1 there were 422,000 with a share of 2.4% and on Sky Sport One the audience was 370,000 with a 2.1% share.

In The Netherlands, Ziggo Sport, the joint venture between Liberty Global and Vodafone, pulled 935,000 viewers for the race and a share of 30.3%, fifth biggest Dutch audience of the day.

Golf Tees Off PPV With Las Vegas Showdown

The showdown between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson on Friday will be played on an empty golf course in Las Vegas with the only spectators following on pay-per-view with a suggested retail price of $19.99.

Both players will be wearing microphones during the match hosted by MGM Resorts International at Shadow Creek as they compete for a winner-takes-all prize of $9m (£6.9m).

WarnerMedia’s Turner is presenting Capital One’s The Match: Tiger vs. Phil starting appropriately at high noon local time and 3pm Eastern.

Turner Sports is producing all live event coverage and is the exclusive sales and sponsorship partner, with Excel Sports Management and Lagardère Sports.

The PPV will be available on B/R Live, Turner’s new premium live sports streaming service, as well as via platform operators including Comcast, Charter, Cox, Verizon and Altice in the U.S. and Rogers, Shaw and Bell in Canada through In Demand and Vubiquity (an Amdocs Company).

Turner’s TNT will broadcast content from the event in the weeks after the live event.

Turner International is handling live PPV access outside the USA and Canada.

The golf event is an obvious betting attraction but will be overshadowed by traditional Thanksgiving weekend American football.

The amounts wagered on Tiger vs. Phil as of mid-week were less than 1% of the amount bet on this Floyd Mayweather versus Connor McGregor fight in August, according to Forbes.

Report: Amazon Bidding For Disney Sports Networks

American network CNBC has reported that Amazon aims to buy all of the 22 regional sports TV networks that Disney acquired from Twenty-First Century Fox.

The bold affirmation of the e-commerce company’s big sports ambitions includes New York-based YES Network (home of the MLB Yankees, NBA Brooklyn Nets and MLS New York City FC), according to CNBC.

Competing bidders for the RSNs, according to the channel, are Apollo Global Management, KKR, The Blackstone Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group and the Tegna broadcasting group.

The sports networks were among the Twenty-First Century Fox assets Disney acquired in July for $71.3 billion (£55.76 billion). The Justice Department has okayed the deal contingent on Disney selling them off.

If Amazon, which already has 88.7 million Prime Video users, emerges as the winner it would be the third largest video platform in the USA behind YouTube (192 million) and Netflix (147.5 million), according to research firm eMarketer.

American Stars Back LaLiga Plan

On the opening day of Soccerex USA, LaLiga won a ringing endorsement for its efforts to bring a league game to the States from two of that country’s soccer legends.

Former U.S. World Cup team member Tony Meola and John Harkes, the first American to play in the English Premier League (EPL), co-signed a comment piece in today’s Miami Herald saying they “strongly support” the plan to play a Spanish top-flight match in the Florida city in January.

The players wrote: “It’s good for the fans. It’s good for the game. It’s good for Miami. It’s good for LaLiga and, most important, American soccer.”

LaLiga aims to play a match between FC Barcelona and Girona on January 26 – the first ever regular season game to be held abroad by one of the world’s elite soccer leagues.

The article said: “We believe this will be great for American soccer – a rising tide lifts all boats.”

They wrote: “We believe this match will cause more kids to play and more people to watch the sport. That’s a good thing.”

“Soccer politics are complex, but we believe fans should have the loudest voice. To show our support for the match, we signed our names to the petition at BringUSTheGame.com, joining more than 30,000 fans.”

Soccerex USA attendees include MLS Commissioner Don Garber, US Soccer President Carlos Cordeiro, CONCACAF President Victor Montagliani and many other leaders.

Reno-Tahoe Exits Winter Olympics Race

The Reno-Tahoe area of Nevada-California has dropped out of the running to host the 2030 Winter Olympics.

The move leaves Salt Lake City and Denver as the two cities still in the running to be chosen by the U.S. Olympic Committee to bid for the Games.

“We have maintained from the start that a Reno-Tahoe bid would have to make sense economically, environmentally and socially,” Brian Krolicki, Chairman of the Reno Tahoe Winter Games Coalition, said in a news release.

“Given the parameters and conditions presented, we cannot make the numbers pass muster. To continue, at this point, would be untenable and unwise.”

The release stated: “Budget models for the Reno-Tahoe bid are based on a traditional seven-year marketing and sponsorship cycle and the RTWGC does not see an alternative business model to make a significantly shorter time span work.”

USOC CEO Sarah Hirshland stated in the release: “I’d like to thank the Reno-Tahoe Winter Games Coalition for participating in our process up to this point. The leaders in Nevada and California have demonstrated an incredible commitment to the Olympic and Paralympic community and the athletes we all serve. The USOC looks forward to continuing to work with RTWGC to identify new opportunities to take advantage.”