Category: Sport

  • Qatar 2022: Winners and Losers

    I’m just trying to see who the winners and losers of Qatar 2022 will be following FIFA’s decision to hold the World Cup in November and December rather than the traditional summer slot: I suspect that there are many more losers, and not very many more winners. I do think there’s a strong chance that…

  • The £5 Billion League

    You know how this is supposed to be austerity Britain? Well you wouldn’t know that looking at the sums announced earlier today as the conclusion of the next three years’ of live Premier League coverage were concluded. The total cost of the rights was £5.136 billion for the seasons 2016/17 to 2018/19. Sky has retained…

  • The Open Goes to Sky

    As has been widely anticipated in the press, today saw news that Sky Sports has won a five-year contract beginning in 2017 to broadcast The Open golf tournament exclusively live. The BBC will have a two hour 8pm-10pm highlights package. Sky is said to be paying twice as much as the BBC, and they will…

  • Is Golf Becoming as Invisible as Cricket?

    According to a report in the Telegraph, the Royal & Ancient is considering whether or not they extend their 50 year broadcasting agreement with the BBC for future coverage of golf, or whether some or all rights go to Sky. In reality, I suspect that this is a negotiating tactic to try to squeeze a…

  • Do We Need an Olympic TV Channel?

    It’s a bit of a moot question, because the IOC has just voted to launch one at the 127th IOC session taking place today and tomorrow in Monaco. Recommendation 19 Launch of an Olympic Channel is unanimously approved #olympic #agenda2020 #127iocsession — IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) December 8, 2014 The full description of the recommendation was…

  • Selling Your Sport Short

    There’s an interesting piece in yesterday’s Guardian hypothesising that by selling itself nearly completely to pay-TV players, rugby union could be very short sighted and diminish the appeal of the sport. Regular readers of this blog will know that I think the English Cricket Board has done precisely that, and we’re ending up with a…

  • Possible Sale of Channel 5

    In recent days it has been fairly widely reported that Richard Desmond, owner of Channel 5, Express Newspapers and other more “specialist” TV services, is looking to sell Channel 5. Desmond bought Channel 5 for a knockdown price of £103.5m in 2008, and he’s run it pretty shrewdly, keeping costs down and turning a profit.…

  • Ashes Highlights This Winter

    Returning to a familiar topic, I note that there are no Ashes highlights on Channel 5 this winter. Instead they’ll be broadcast on Pick TV – Sky’s free-to-air channel available on most platforms including Freeview. They’ll be broadcast nightly at 10pm, just before play begins the following day. Live coveragewill of course be on Sky…

  • BT and Champions’ League Football

    I must admit that like many others, I was surprised to learn over the weekend that BT had bought all the Champions’ League live TV rights exlcusively. At a stroke they’ve knocked both ITV and Sky out of the picture starting from the 2015 season. I’m going to try to unpick the subject a bit…

  • Internet and Mobile Premier League Rights

    Recently News International won the rights for both mobile and internet highlights pacakges from the next season. These are the packages that are currently owned by ESPN (mobile) and Yahoo (internet), neither of whom will have any rights from next season. According to a source at The Guardian, News International paid £20m for these rights.…

  • Olympics Day 5 – Wiggo

    OK. I didn’t get to watch anything live today. It was a busy work day – but more of that later tonight. However I did manage to catch Bradley Wiggins’ awesome time trial ride. Coming 10 days after his victory in the Tour de France, he’s clearly an outstanding athlete. Wonderful Bradley leading the charge…

  • Olympics Day 4 – Archery

    [Again, I’ve not had a chance to update my photos yet, so I’ll drop them in later] Archery is another wildcard event in that I was able to get a couple of £20 tickets, and thought it’d be fun to watch at Lord’s. All the Olympic venues have secure cycle parks, and since I had…