Pay-TV broadcaster True Visions has acquired a major package of media rights for Europe’s top two club competitions, the UEFA Champions League and Europa League, in Asia.

The BBC is close to agreeing an extension of its contract with Six Nations rugby.

It is understood that the deal will secure the rights for four years from 2013, capsule when the current contract expires, site to broadcast the tournament which includes England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France and Italy.

The news comes despite the BBC being forced to make cuts in its sport programming. Some sports will have to be cut from the already-reduced portfolio, with the US$64million-a-year Formula One contract the favourite to be slashed when the contract expires.

The Six Nations is easier for the BBC to justify as the involvement of Wales, Scotland and Ireland – as well as England – means it satisfies the BBC charter requirement to reach the “nations and regions”.

Friday night matches will be abandoned next season, with games restricted to Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

MP & Silva has agreed to extend its deal with DFL Sports Enterprises, ampoule widening its distribution rights to German soccer’s Bundesliga to include France.

The French market now becomes the fourth territory covered by the partnership, following a recent agreement for the rights in Japan, Vietnam and Belgium.

MP & Silva will be the exclusive distributor of the rights across all platforms, including cable, satellite, terrestrial, Web TV, IPTV and mobile, for the next three seasons.

Andrea Radrizzani, group chief executive of MP & Silva, said: “We are thrilled to extend our partnership with DFL Sports Enterprises to cover such an important market. With several French players currently involved in the Bundesliga and with Franck Ribéry having extended his contract with Bayern Munich through to 2015, the Bundesliga is an extremely attractive product for French broadcasters.”

Jörg Daubitzer, managing director of DFL Sports Enterprises, added: “We are very pleased about this additional cooperation with MP & Silva. The sports rights situation in France is currently changing significantly and we feel that MP & Silva, being one of the leading sports rights agencies with excellent contacts to all significant players on the French market, is best suited to maximise the exposure of Bundesliga in this important market.”

Neo Sports has won the broadcast rights of the French Open tennis tournament for the next five years from incumbent holder ESPN Star Sports. 

The rights acquisition, erectile the terms of which were undisclosed, viagra 100mg cover the period 2012 to 2016 for the Indian Sub Continent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives)

Prasana Krishnan, COO, NEO Sports Broadcast Pvt. Ltd said: “Acquiring the telecast rights of French Open is in sync with our vision to provide quality viewing experience of the best international sporting events. This is a significant step in that direction and we will continue to fortify our product offering.”

Michel Grach, media and sponsorship director, Federation Francaise de Tennis (FFT) added: “The French Open enjoys a large fan base in India and our association with Neo Sports will definitely help us expand this further.”

The French Open is a marquee Grand Slam event held in May. It is regarded as one of the most physically demanding tennis tournaments in the world since it is the only Grand Slam played on clay.

Dorna Sports, rx the owner commercial rights to MotoGP, cialis buy has agreed a five year deal with ESPN Star Sports (ESS) to broadcast the motorcycling championship in 24 Asian countries.

Star Sports has been broadcasting MotoGP for the past 16 years. The new deal will allow it to show footage on a variety of platforms.

Manel Arroyo, impotent Dorna Sports S.L. media managing director, said: “ESPN Star Sports is a longstanding partner of MotoGP in the region and we are happy to be extending our agreement with them. It is encouraging to have a dedicated partner in ESPN Star Sports who shares our ambition to bring the best of motorcycle racing to viewers throughout the whole of Asia.

“Fans that have followed the evolution of the sport on ESPN Star Sports will have many more great moments to catch in the coming seasons with their world-class coverage and commitment to take the sport to even greater heights. ESS will also be focusing on producing features around riders, teams and different MotoGP projects from the region, to give their coverage more local flavour and with coverage across all the ESS platforms – TV, internet, mobile, fans will have even more ways to keep up to date with MotoGP.”

Manu Sawhney, ESPN Star Sports’ managing director, added: “Over the years, we have been focused on growing our motor sports content, and this acquisition underlines our commitment to motor sports fans across the region. Our continued partnership with MotoGP represents the strong relationship with the rights holder, Dorna Sports, and with our on-going efforts to build and strengthen the sport on our networks, we have witnessed a growth in traction for the Championship. Leveraging on the reach of our networks and multiple media platforms, we aim to keep building MotoGP’s profile, while offering an excellent promotional platform for our business partners”.

The new deal will see ESS increase its coverage of MotoGP with plans for pre and post-race presentations as well as qualifying, onsite reports and a weekly show.

RS, a new entrant in the Thai pay-television market, has purchased the rights for Spanish football’s La Liga in Thailand and plans to invest heavily to acquire further content to grow the business.

The company’s chief operations officer Pornpan Techarungchaiku said the company would be spending “hundreds of millions” on the new service, and that most of the investment would be on content licence fees. She said that the company may bid for English Premier League rights when they next come on the market, for the 2013-14 season onwards. It is understood to have acquired the Liga rights for two seasons, 2012-13 and 2013-14.

Techarungchaiku said the company would be investing more in the pay-television service than the US$11.5m per year it currently invests in its free-to-air satellite channels.

RS plans to launch its satellite and cable pay-television service in June or July 2012.

Techarungchaiku said: “Under a commitment with the Spanish football league to increase the number of its fans in the kingdom, the company has high hopes to achieve an ambitious target of 150,000 to 160,000 subscribers in the first year. We expect to see 10-per-cent growth a year.”

France Telecom’s chief executive Stéphane Richard has confirmed that the company was in talks with Qatari satellite broadcaster Al Jazeera about a possible sale of its Orange Sport pay-television service.

Richard said: “The destiny of our sports channel is uncertain. Al Jazeera has shown an interest and talks are under way.” He said that a sale to Al Jazeera was “a plausible option” for the company but that it was too soon to make any definitive statements.

Al Jazeera’s bid for the loss-making service follows the broadcaster’s recent acquisition of a package of live rights for the top football league, Ligue 1, for US$130.5m per season for four seasons, from 2012-2013 to 2015-16. The company currently has no broadcast outlet to show the matches but has already recruited Charles Biétry, the former head of sport at pay-television operator Canal Plus, to run its French sports operations.

Orange’s talks with Al Jazeera follow months of fruitless talks with other potential buyers, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and Disney-owned sports broadcaster ESPN.

The people of Germany have taken to the FIFA Women’s World Cup as television ratings hit the highest ever for the women’s game.

Germany Women’s 1-0 quarter final defeat to Japan Women in the FIFA Women’s World Cup drew a record audience in the home country for a women’s football match of 16.95 million people, a 59.3% share, on public-service channel ZDF. Germany’s four games in the tournament drew the top four audiences ever in the country for women’s football matches.

The France-England quarter-final also drew a far higher audience in Germany than in either of the two competing countries. ZDF had an audience of 6.88 million, a 37.1% share. The match gave the Balloré-owned French free-to-air channel Direct 8 its highest ever audience for a women’s football match, with an average of 1.04 million viewers, a 7.95% share, with the audience peaking at 2.54 million during the penalty shoot-out, which France won 4-3.

In the UK, the match was watched on BBC2 by an average of 1.8 million viewers, a 2.9%, with audiences peaking at 2.8 million. The BBC moved the match from its digital red-button service to BBC2 after protests from members of parliament that the public-service broadcaster was not giving adequate exposure to women’s football.

The total audiences will be higher once ratings on pan-European broadcaster Eurosport are available.

The 20 clubs of Italy’s top soccer league, discount Lega Serie A, have finally reached an agreement to settle the long-running dispute about the distribution of media-rights income.

The dispute centred on about US$290m from the 2010-11 season which is to be distributed in proportion to the size of each club’s supporter base.

After months of lengthy negotiations, in which a split emerged between the top five clubs – Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Roma and Napoli – and the rest, the breakthrough came at Friday’s league assembly. The income is to be distributed taking into account surveys of supporter bases, the results of which had been fiercely contested by the clubs, and audience ratings for live Serie A matches.

The key to the settlement was the 15 small clubs agreeing to a significant reduction in the weight given to audience ratings compared to the survey findings.

The clubs also agreed the guidelines for their sale of media rights for the next three seasons, from 2012-2013 to 2014-2015. The guidelines will now be sent for approval to the country’s antitrust and communications authorities.

If the guidelines are approved, the league, and its media adviser, Infront Sports & Media, will be able to auction the rights in the autumn.