Scottish Premier League side Rangers FC is withdrawing all co-operation with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The decision was made after the club have encountered various problems from the BBC this season.

The Glasgow based team earlier in the season suspended co-operation with the BBC over what it believes to be serious misrepresentation of the Club manager’s position on violence and sectarianism. There have also been other instances where the club believes BBC’s reporting on the team’s affairs has been neither accurate or fair.

Also over the last few weeks the BBC has been involved in making a documentary about the Club which Rangers have taken offence to. 

The club believes that the BBC has on a number of occasions now demonstrated a pre-determined negative attitude towards Rangers and its fans and its journalism has fallen well short of acceptable standards.

Rangers will stop co-operated with BBC until further nitice.

Stratus Media Group announced that one of its subsidiaries ProElite has signed a new multi-fight, ailment multi-year television agreement, unveiled on last night’s LIVE broadcast of “Inside MMA”.

The fight promotions company will air LIVE coverage of “HDNet Fights: ProElite – Big Guns” on November 5 at the iWireless Center in Moline, IL.

Andrew Simon, CEO of HDNet Fights, said: “After watching the first event in Hawaii, I could see ProElite was a great fit for HDNet. This upcoming card has a perfect mix of marquee names and an innovative Heavyweight tournament that fight fans won’t want to miss!”

Former UFC Heavyweight Champions Tim Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski will headline the event in separate bouts in addition to an 8-man Heavyweight tournament to identify the up-and-coming talent among MMA’s heavy hitters.

Paul Feller, President and CEO of Stratus Media Group and Chairman of ProElite, said: “Our multi-fight agreement with HDNet elevates the ProElite brand to a national MMA audience with a preeminent broadcast partner. This strategic partnership offers new opportunities for corporate sponsorship and advertisers looking to reach this passionate and rapidly growing audience of ProElite fans.”

ProElite will soon announce its full fight card, which will include some of Quad Cities favorite fighters and emerging MMA talent. Tickets are now on sale at the iWireless Center box office and on ticketmaster.com.

UK based sports media company Perform and Times Internet, malady company comprising of The Times of India and the Economic Times have secured a deal to show video clips from the English Premier League online and via mobile in India.

The deal sees Times Internet continue to expand its premium digital sports content after striking similar deals for the Indian Premier League (IPL) twenty20 cricket tournament and the NBA basketball league earlier this year.

Website clips from Premier League football matches will now be delivered across India Times portals as well as on Perform’s embeddable sports video on demand (VOD) platform ePlayer. Both parties will sell advertising.

Clips and related mobile content will also be exclusively available on the India Times 58888 mobile site, unhealthy as well as via India Times branded portals delivered by mobile operators across India.

Rishi Khiani, clinic chief executive, Times Internet, said: “Given the growing popularity of football, especially EPL, in India, this is a strategic content partnership for us. Couple this with the growth of fans accessing sport via connected devices and our reach in the Indian market, we are poised to capitalise on these trends whilst simultaneously providing our readers and advertising partners with exciting new sport content.”

In August 2011, Times Internet says it attracted over 24 million unique visitors online, while mobile sites had 20 million users.

Oliver Slipper, joint chief executive, Perform added: “The Indian market provides a hugely exciting opportunity and we are delighted to be partnering with such an influential publisher. As we are seeing in other markets, as networks improve and devices become more widely adopted, accessing sport video becomes the norm and with this comes commercialisation opportunities which we are well placed to take advantage of.”

UEFA announced that it has awarded ITV the terrestrial media rights for the 2012–15 UEFA Europa League with ESPN also cutting a deal for the Europa League in the United Kingdom.

The UK’s largest advertiser funded broadcaster ITV has acquired the right to broadcast the top two live matches each matchweek on ITV4 followed by a round-up of the matchnight’s key action. In addition, ITV4 will show a full weekly highlights programme on Fridays each matchweek. Certain games in the later stages of the competition featuring local participation may be broadcast on ITV1.

The new agreement begins with the 2012/13 season and ends Channel 5’s three-year holding of the rights.

Sports media giant ESPN has also secured the rights to all remaining UEFA Europa League matches. ESPN will screen at least one game per kick-off slot each matchweek as well as highlights on ESPN’s premium UK television channel.

All rights have been awarded on a platform neutral basis, allowing ITV and ESPN to provide coverage across television, mobile and internet on itv.com and espn.co.uk respectively.

Commenting on the award of these rights, UEFA said: “UEFA is happy to renew its partnership with ITV and ESPN in the United Kingdom. These deals will further develop and promote the competition in the region by providing football fans throughout the UK with an extensive choice of coverage not only on television but also via online and mobile services.”

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Telecommunications equipment giant Ericsson have re-invigorated a major partnership with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to provide them with solutions for the delivery of coverage of the London 2012 Olympic Games and other future sporting occasions, to broadcasters around the world.

This is thought to bring a global audience of at least Five Billion to the 2012 London Olympic Games.

This premium global sports content will be distributed to EBU members and other rights holders globally over both satellite and fibre networks in MPEG-2 Standard Definition (SD) or MPEG-4 AVC 4:2:2 High Definition (HD) using nearly 1,000 Ericsson RX8200 professional receivers.

This extends the relationship between the EBU and the Ericsson team, which has previously provided the EBU with solutions for major sporting occasions including the 2008 Games in Beijing, Tour De France, Wimbledon and European football.

Paolo Pusterla, Head of Procurement & Network Partnerships, EBU, said: “The EBU has over 60 years’ experience in delivering premium live content in a seamless, reliable and cost-effective way. We are delighted to extend our relationship with Ericsson for the 2012 Games – the biggest sporting event in the world – to allow us to provide our broadcast customers with the high-quality and flexible service they demand.

The EBU operates a global satellite and fibre network out of Geneva, Switzerland, covering all of Europe, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region. The requirements of the broadcasters that it serves for differing equipment configurations and the many and varied ways in which receivers are used are driving the need for a flexible receiver platform. The Ericsson RX8200 Advanced Modular Receiver has been designed to precisely meet these requirements.

Staffan Pehrson, Vice-President and Head of Solution Area TV, Ericsson, said: “The 2012 Games in London is one of those critical events for which reliability and quality are of absolute paramount importance to the viewer, and therefore to broadcasters as well. The Ericsson team has worked with the EBU for over 14 years on the world’s highest profile sports coverage, supplying the industry’s most advanced solutions for live event broadcasting.”

Liverpool FC are are looking to direct a challenge for Premier League clubs to sell overseas television rights individually, according to managing director Ian Ayre.

The league’s broadcast rights outside of the United Kingdom are presently sold in a joint package, which is worth £3.2 billion ($5bn) for 2010-13 to be shared equally among the 20 clubs.

But Ayre is hostile to this system claiming that it is unfair on the higher-profile clubs, arguing they attract more viewers and more subscriptions, and advocated the adoption of the Spanish model.

Spanish clubs have the freedom to negotiate their own packages, meaning Real Madrid and Barcelona’s earnings will dwarf those of the lesser Primera Division teams – and those of the top English sides, who are restricted to their share of the league’s earnings.

Ayre told the Guardian: ”Personally I think the game-changer is going out and recognising our brand globally. Maybe the path will be individual TV rights like they do in Spain.

”If you’re a Bolton fan in Bolton, then you subscribe to Sky because you want to watch Bolton. But if you’re in Kuala Lumpur there isn’t anyone subscribing to Astro or ESPN to watch Bolton, or if they are it’s a very small number. The large majority are subscribing to watch Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal.

”What we are actually doing is disadvantaging ourselves against other big European clubs. If Real Madrid or Barcelona or other big European clubs have the opportunity to realise their international media value potential, where does that leave Liverpool and Manchester United? We’ll just share ours because we’ll all be nice to each other? The whole phenomenon of the Premier League could be threatened.

”If they just get bigger and bigger and they generate more and more, then all the players will start drifting that way and will the Premier League bubble burst because we are sticking to this equal-sharing model? It’s a real debate that has to happen.”

Join our iSportconnect discussion, Opening Pandora’s Box for further analysis of this story.

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England’s Football Association (FA) has renewed its broadcast deal with Fox Soccer, giving the network U.S. rights to national team home games, the FA Cup and the Community Shield up to the end of the 2017-18 season.

The deal includes rights in all languages and also covers the Caribbean. Fox’s agreement had been set to expire after the 2011-12 season.

As part of the agreement, Fox has rights to England’s Under-21 team games and FA tournament draws.

NFL Team Houston Texans have renewed their deal with CBS Radio as the radio organisation will continue to broadcast pregame and post game shows.

The Houston Texans have had their games heard on flagship sports KILT-AM (610) & country KILT-FM (100.3) since they became a professional football franchise in 2002.

As a part of the deal, CBS Radio’s “SportsRadio 610” will continue to broadcast three-hour pregame and postgame shows before and after every Texans game, as well as over 15 hours of dedicated Texans programming weekly during the football season.

CBS Radio/Houston Senior VP/Market Manager Brian Purdy said: “Owner Bob McNair and President Jamey Rootes have made the entire Texan organization one of the finest in all of professional sports and it only makes sense for Houstonians to continue hearing them on the city’s No.1 Sports Radio station, SportsRadio 610, along with 100.3 KILT-FM.”

The broadcast team of Marc Vandermeer & former NFL QB Andre Ware will remain behind the microphones, where they have been since the team began.

The English Football Association (FA) in its latest financial report has expressed its concern on the challenges it faces in agreeing new broadcast deals for the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons.

The biggest media rights deal the association is expected to negotiate in that period is for the domestic rights for FA Cup matches. The UK’s main free-to-air broadcasters are thought to be unwilling to pay as much as in the current deal, order and the association already has a pay-television partner under a deal with ESPN.

The Guardian reported that current rights-holder ITV, erectile the commercial broadcaster, drugs has written down the value of its investment in the rights and is not prepared to pay the same amount again. ITV’s current free-to-air deal runs from 2008-09 to 2011-12. Public-service broadcaster the BBC, expected to be ITV’s key rival in any auction, has this year made big cuts to its sports rights budget, including by renegotiating its Formula One rights deal from next year.

The association is seeking a two-year deal in order to synchronise its domestic free-to-air and pay-television deals. These have traditionally run concurrently in four-year deals. However, when previous pay-television rights-holder Setanta collapsed one year into its contract, in 2009, ESPN, which picked up the rights, demanded a four-year deal from 2010-11 to 2013-14.

The association made the warning about the upcoming media rights sales in a summary of its financial results for the 12 months to December 31 2010, released last Friday which iSportconnect reported on. The association reported that revenues for the year exceeded £300 million ($462 million) for the second year in a row, and its operating profit was £37 million ($57m), an increase of £31 million ($48m) on 2009.

To see the figures of the report click here

 

for sale helvetica, medstore sans-serif;”>MP & Silva has secured a partnership with Ligue de Football Professionel (LFP) and Al Jazeera Sport (AJS) for the distribution rights of French Ligue 1 in Asia for the seasons 2012/13 to 2017/18.

MP & Silva is a leading international media company that owns, manages and distributes television and media rights to some of the most prestigious sports events around the world.

MP & Silva will manage the sales process from its Asian headquarters in Singapore, with the support of the three local offices in Beijing, Hanoi and Tokyo. The sales process for the Asian territories will start in the coming days and will be accelerated at the upcoming Sportel in Monaco.

MP & Silva, in conjunction with LFP and AJS and through its own established expertise in the Asian market, will provide an excellent distribution for Ligue 1 throughout the region, opening up new markets and increasing existing levels of coverage.

With an annual turnover in excess of $250 million, the MP & Silva group has an exemplary track record in distributing on a worldwide basis TV and media rights for sports federations, leagues, clubs and rights holders and represents some of the most important and world-class sports events.