International Sports Coverage

Tennis Channel has taken the right to ATP Tennis in the United States from ESPN from 2021.

Trouble in France with Ligue 1 rights holder Mediapro missing a payment and wanting to renegotiate their deal and the league refusing.

https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/lfp-france-mediapro-tv-rights-contract-payments-ligue-1-canal-bein

The AFL Grand Final, one of the biggest events in Australian sport, will be played next Saturday in Brisbane.

Will be the first GF played outside Melbourne, and also the first played at night - will be interesting to see if this aspect remains...

Very lucky to have got to this stage, the season was paused after round 1 in March until June 11, and the schedule had to be redrawn after the 4th round when the spike in cases in Melbourne resulted in state border closures. There ended up being 2 hubs set up, in Perth & in Queensland where the Melbourne & Sydney teams relocated to. When the borders were closed, the 2 broadcasters (7 network & Fox Sports) had to have the games called remotely, in 7's case, from Melbourne & Adelaide where Bruce McAvaney lives. Some networks also sent their Football reporters up to Queensland, where they had to undergo 14 days quarantine.

Bruce is now up in Brisbane, where he will be presenting 7's coverage on Saturday, and other commentators have come up from Melbourne, and had to quarantine on arrival in Queensland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_AFL_season

https://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/channel-7-slammed-for-commentary-call-afl-disappointed/news-story/00482b0e0ec6bbac5a86d945e9ad545c

Following on from acquiring the Rugby Australia rights last week to air on it's FTA channels and subscription streaming service Stan, the Nine Network has now done a similar deal with Wimbledon and the French Open for the Australian rights, with selected matches airing FTA and the rest on Stan, under the banner Stan Sport.

https://wwos.nine.com.au/rugby/stan-sport-nine-rugby-australia-three-year-deal-bledisloe-cup-super-rugby-championship/ffec11f0-d8a6-4216-ac8a-d4dfcfa81fe6

https://wwos.nine.com.au/tennis/nine-network-stan-sport-secures-rights-to-wimbledon-and-roland-garros-tennis/886722ab-a1f0-4f17-b57e-a805fa5e35db


Wonder if ITV could end up doing something similar with BritBox in the future - although the shadow of ITV Digital might put them off.

In the NFL, the Thanksgiving primetime game between the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers was postponed due to a coronavirus outbreak.

This led to the game being rescheduled for Sunday afternoon, then Tuesday night, Wednesday night, and then moved forward to Wednesday afternoon.

The reasoning why it was moved forward?

Another ultimate 2020 note: the Ravens-Steelers game is kicking off Wednesday at 3:40 pm because NBC wanted and was committed to broadcasting the 88th Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree lighting ceremony on Wednesday night, per sources. Tree lighting trumped football.

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) November 30, 2020

Also, missing the other (secondary) issue about the kick off time being 3.40EST, is that NBC are also thinking about audience inheritance from the NFL coverage and keeping them for the flicking of the electric switch..

It’s a nice KO time (8:40pm) for U.K./Irish viewers, if the game goes ahead at all.

Interestingly, at the point it had been moved to Sunday afternoon - when it would have, unusually, aired nationally on NBC alongside the usual slate of Fox and CBS regionally televised games - NBC elected to put the usual Sunday Night Football crew of Al Michaels, Cris Collinsworth and Michelle Tafoya on the game, with SNF being called by Mike Tirico (who originally would have done both night games on Thanksgiving weekend) and Tony Dungy. They are still down to call the game afaik even though it would have originally been one of Michaels “bye weeks” he is taking this season.

I suspect Cricket Australia wish they'd never left Nine - Seven proving to be a nightmare with getting through the pandemic.

https://tvtonight.com.au/2020/12/seven-cricket-australia-war-escalates.html

The best comment below that article ..

I hear your thinking Brekkie, but remember 9 thought Tennis would be a better bet for viewing figures (and a more consistent evening schedule throught the summer weeknights, something they did'nt get with Cricket every couple of weeks that could go on until after 7pm) so they threw in the lot.

CA had to take the split deal with 7 and Foxtel. Aussie FTA cricket fans should be careful of this spat. 7 could quite easely really go off on a strop, and leave all live home test matches to Fox and show the highlights in the more advertiser friendly peak time hours.

Watching the coverage from the other side of the planet via BT Sport (whose own deal with CA ends at the end of this season, doesn't it?) 7 didn't appear to take the coverage much forward from 9 at all - other than having larger on screen statistcal graphics in a silly font for the batsman/bowlers name.

Among the 1,000,000 announcements at Disney’s Investor Day yesterday, a big one for college American football fans (are there many this side of the world?) - ESPN and ABC (both owned by Disney) have nabbed exclusive rights to the Southeastern Conference beginning in 2024, with the SEC on CBS package moving there.

A million is an exaggeration, but you're right, there was a LOT of stuff announced last night.

Is the college football thing relevant to UK audiences though? Is it even shown on TV in the UK?

Yes - in fact I believe there's a game at midnight tonight on BT Sport ESPN HD.