This happened a couple weeks ago, but it's worth noting around here for a number of reasons.
BSkyB retained a significant portion of the UK TV rights for the top football (soccer) league (the English Premier League), but had to pay through the nose to do so. More interestingly, BT Group (think AT&T in the UK) got the rest of the matches. Effectively, the only way to watch all the EPL matches live would be to subscribe to BT Vision (the old Comcast Sports Net method, but national). ESPN, which had a portion of the matches, lost them (Bristol wanted to expand their British sports coverage for their ESPN product; they have a separate channel, ESPN America, for US sports). The combined bid totaled £3.07 billion for three years, which works out to US$1.58 billion per year. Two points of contrast: the four broadcast partners of the NFL will pay $4.95 billion combined per year in their new deal that starts in 2014. The previous deal with BSkyB and ESPN was $933 million/year. An aside: the share prices for both BSkyB and BT took a hit the day after the announcement, as investors thought they overpaid for the rights. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/13/premier-league-tv-rights-3-billion-sky-bt The US rights (which had most matches on Fox Soccer Channel (with the occasional handoff to the mothership) and a handful on ESPN) are still under negotiation. Worth noting: La Liga (the top flight soccer league in Spain that put two teams in the final four of the Champions League (the European club championship)) sold their US rights to the Al Jazeera Sports Network, which is supposed to launch in August 2012. For us fans of the beautiful game, we're gonna have to dig up our cable listings or find those hidden Internet feeds. Joe Hass -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
