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Business of TV Sport
Sportel Monaco 2011

ITV to show Froch-Taylor delayed

UK commercial broadcaster ITV is to show delayed coverage of this weekend’s WBC super middleweight title clash in the US between the UK’s Carl Froch’s and challenger Jermaine Taylor after Froch’s promoter, Mike Hennessey, failed to secure a mainstream television deal for live rights.
The fight will be shown live on a pay-per-view basis on the Perform Group agency’s www.omnisport.tv website. The fight will be the biggest-ever UK-focused event shown on the site, which also carries exclusive coverage of Italian Serie A football.

Hennessey turned to Perform after ITV and pay-broadcasters BSkyB and Setanta all refused to meet his asking price, which is understood to have started at over £1 million and fell progressively to below £500,000.

The fight was not covered by the two-year, 26-fight deal ITV agreed with Hennessey last September and its 3am start time meant it made little sense for the commercial broadcaster. BSkyB and Setanta, meanwhile, were not expecting a Hennessey fight to come on the market, given the promoter’s link with ITV, and had already committed their boxing budgets.

ITV will show delayed coverage of the fight at 8.30pm on Sunday on digital channel ITV4, repeated on its national ITV1 channel at 11.15pm