The South African Football Association has increased the value of rights to broadcast the country’s national soccer team’s matches by over 300 percent. Public-service broadcaster SABC are the most recent carriers of the rights, and are reportedly being asked to pay around US$19.3 million to renew its deal.

The association says the rights have increased in value due to the country hosting the 2009 Confederations Cup and the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and the recent success of the country’s national team which has led to them rising up the FIFA world rankings.

Discussions are ongoing between the association and SABC since the latest deal expired in March.

Kirsten Nematendani, the president of the association said: “We await a final quotation on the total revenue to be expected by the association through this exciting new venture.”

The rights cover around 60 matches per year played by the South African national teams, including the men’s senior team, the women’s senior team and age-level representative sides.

Pay-television broadcaster Fox Sports Latin America has secured exclusive live rights to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in the region.

The contract will last for two years, capsule enabling Fox to show coverage in 18 countries in Latin America excluding Brazil, impotent which has a separate deal with the Globo media group. Fox will broadcast 24 live UFC events per year, cialis as well as other magazine programming and archive content which will be available on the channels Fox Sports, Fox Sports+ and Fox Sports HD.

Dana White, the president of UFC, said: “We felt the time was right to expand in Latin America. We launched with Globosat in Brazil in 2008 and saw the popularity for the sport explode. We knew we had millions of fans in Latin America and wanted to give them access to content and programming developed exclusively for them.

“We are excited to be able to bring our viewers a front row seat to the fastest growing sport in world,” said Patrick Ilabaca, vice president of global marketing and business development at Fox Pan American Sports, an international sports programming and production entity which operates Fox Sports Latin America. “Through our agreement with UFC, mixed martial arts fans throughout Latin America will for the first time be able to watch live UFC events exclusively on Fox Sports, which were traditionally only available on pay-per-view.”

ARD’s Sportschau channel’s coverage of the opening weekend of German soccer’s top flight the Bundesliga attracted 4.88 million viewers, giving the programme second place in the German TV ratings charts for Saturday evening.

The broadcast gave the channel 27.5 percent market share.

Televised football in Germany has been a huge success in recent months with the country also leading the international ratings charts for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in the summer, with a high proportion of worldwide viewers of the games coming from the country.

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has announced that it has secured broadcasting agreements in Belgium, Croatia and Poland for next month’s 2011 IAAF World Championships in Daegu.

IEC in Sports, IAAF’s media rights agency for Europe and Africa, secured the deals on IAAF’s behalf.

In Belgium, following the agreement that was concluded a month ago with VRT the Flemish public broadcaster, an additional deal has been finalised with RTBF, the French speaking public broadcaster.

In Croatia, an agreement has been reached with SPTV, the newly created sports national and free-to-air TV channel which is 100% owned by the National Olympic Committee of Croatia. In Poland, a deal has been finalised with TVP, the Polish public broadcaster.

The Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew has told his players the danger of using social network sites and how they could be sued for breach of contract when they criticise the club.

Magpie players, including Joey Barton and Jose Enrique, have used Twitter to question the club’s transfer policy.

Pardew explained that “The problem I have with Twitter is that people are twittering in an emotional state.”

The Twitter debate has been circling for months and hit the headlines when Wayne Rooney used it is show his feelings to a fan.

Major sports broadcaster ESPN has renewed its agreements to broadcast live and exclusive coverage in the United Kingdom of several of Europe’s elite soccer leagues and competitions for the coming season.

The deals include at least two matches each week from Italy’s Serie A, including Coppa Italia games and the season-opening Super Cup, while matches and highlights from the Dutch Eredivisie and the Russian Premier Liga will also be aired during the season.

As part of the deal for Italian soccer, the broadcaster will continue its ESPN Kicks – Serie A show, screening highlights and goals from every game.

“The renewal of these agreements is an excellent result for all soccer fans in the United Kingdom, giving them access to live and exclusive coverage of some of Europe’s leading soccer leagues and competitions. We are building an excellent portfolio of live soccer and sport on ESPN.” said Jeroen Oerlemans, vice-president TV Channels, ESPN EMEA.

ESPN will continue to offer top domestic and international soccer, which for the coming season includes the Barclays Premier League, FA Cup, Clydesdale Bank Premier League, Euro 2012 qualifiers, the Bundesliga and the Uefa Europa League.

In addition to live and exclusive television coverage of these football leagues and competitions, match coverage will also be made available online at ESPNsoccernet.com.

Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation have won the broadcasting rights for Australia’s 2011 cricket tour of Sri Lanka by the Sri Lanka Cricket board worth an estiamted deal of US$200,600

The initial offer made by the broadcaster was for US$155,010, which was then topped by rival bidder Carlton Sports Network for US$183,277. Ultimately, the price paid by the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation is the highest ever for local television broadcasting rights received by Sri Lanka Cricket.

Meanwhile, local radio broadcasting rights for the tour have been awarded to Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation for a sum of US$6,840, which is also the highest ever amount received for rights of its kind.

Australia’s tour of Sri Lanka begins on 6th August with the first Twenty20 match in Pallekele. Overall, the tour consists of two Twenty20 matches, five One Day Internationals and three Tests, with the final Test to be played between the 16th and 20th September.

Neo Sports Broadcast has announced that it has acquired exclusive broadcast rights for soccer’s European international tournament Euro 2012, to be jointly-hosted in Poland and Ukraine next year.

The rights package Neo has acquired are for the Indian Subcontinent, a territory which includes India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives. The deal encompasses UEFA Euro 2012, UEFA European Under 21 Championship 2013 and the UEFA Women’s Euro 2013.

Neo Sports Broadcast COO Prasana Krishnan said: “This acquisition is a significant step towards delivering on the overall brand promise of Neo Sports as a premium sport destination. This is by far one of the most high profile soccer events and will definitely garner high quality viewership for the channel.”

UEFA Euro 2012 will be played amongst the top 16 European teams in June 2012.

The previous edition in 2008 was broadcast live in 203 countries and the average audience figure for a live match exceeded 146 million people.

Neo Sports last month announced that it had also secured five-year broadcast rights to the French Open for the Indian subcontinent, as well as rights for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, as the channel attempts to move away from its traditional sports coverage of solely cricket.