TV Sports Markets Newslines
A round-up of the major headlines and TV rights news from TV Sports Markets and the world of televised sport. TV Sport Markets is the highly acclaimed industry reference tool for the main players in the broadcast and sport industry worldwide.
- The Fifa World Cup final, in which Spain beat Holland on Sunday night, drew the second-biggest Dutch television audience ever, as 8.5 million viewers, a 90.6-per-cent audience share, watched the match on free-to-air channel Nederland 1, according to overnight figures from audience measurement company Eurodata TV Worldwide. Nederland 1 is operated by public-service broadcaster NOS.
- Fifa’s website had 150 million unique users and seven billion page views during the 31 days of the Fifa World Cup – 1.5 billion more page views than the federation was expecting. Traffic peaked during the England v USA match, when the site registered one million page views every second.
- Uefa’s negotiations for a Euro 2012 television rights deal in the UK are deadlocked as free-to-air broadcasters the BBC and ITV are refusing to pay more than they did for Euro 2008, UK newspaper the Daily Mail reports.
- Italian football’s top division, Serie A, this week published a fresh invitation to tender for its new-media rights and ancillary rights, after having failed to close deals at the original tender prices published in March.
- Indian cable and satellite broadcaster Zee is moving to increase its sports channel line up. The broadcaster has applied to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry for permission to launch dedicated channels for cricket and golf.
- Germany, Europe’s largest television market, will need to develop a genuine pay-television culture if its top football league, the Bundesliga, is to match the broadcast revenue-generating power of Europe’s other top leagues, the league said last week.