The Telegraph reporting that Discovery are going after the Cricket Australia contract in the UK to get this winter's Ashes series on their streaming service.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021...lix-sport/
Discovery, the American TV giant, is a surprise contender to screen this winter’s Ashes as part of attempts to revolutionise sports coverage on its Netflix-style streaming platform.
The Daily Telegraph understands the broadcaster is in a three-horse race with BT and Sky for a potential £50 million-plus four-year package to show England matches in Australia. Amazon has, however, ruled itself out a deal which covers both the men’s and women’s Ashes, the men’s white-ball tour in 2022 and the Big Bash League franchise.
At least three serious offers have been tabled to Cricket Australia for a UK rights package that, some analysts say, represents potentially better value than the billion pound-plus deals that are struck for Premier League football. With no plans to join an “overheated” domestic football bidding war due to begin this spring, Discovery, The Telegraph understands, sees the Ashes as an opportunity to build on a new customer base established during Tokyo 2020.
Surprising after it was thought Sky would be after them - ITV closes in on rights to England women’s internationals
https://www.sportbusiness.com/news/exclu...ogged_in=1
Commercial broadcaster ITV is close to agreeing a deal for the UK rights to England women’s football matches from next season, SportBusiness understands.
The inventory comprises qualifying matches and friendlies, rights to which are jointly held at present by public-service broadcaster the BBC and telco BT until the end of this season.
England women’s broadcast rights are sold by English football’s governing body, the Football Association.
Sky Sports need to lose their International Nations Football coverage, the lack of surrounding content is minimal, and they aren't even running different intros to their coverage of Scotland and N. Ireland tonight.
The trouble is they're little more than filler on Sky Sports for the weeks they're without the Premier League. At least if they were on the BBC they'd be amongst the biggest events the nations show, so are treated as such. The trouble is with the contracts handled centrally that sort of thing isn't really considered.
Interesting regarding ITV and women's football, and will be interesting to see where that is scheduled as I can't see them clearing the ITV schedules in the way they do for the mens in primetime, and early peak is a bit awkward for them with the news hour. I guess with them still handled by the FA rather than centrally that the broadcaster may get some say in the slots they air in.
First post on the new thread... let's use it to have a moan. It's the Welsh way.
I recognise that Sky treat international football as filler material for when the clubs have all sodded off for a week. However, you can see the thinly veiled contempt for anyone who enjoys it throughout the coverage. Back in ye olde times (i.e. 2010 or so), before the centralised contract for qualifiers and friendlies, you'd still have the vast majority of the home nations on Sky (bar the odd ESPN/BBC excursion, usually for Scotland). And for a good amount of the matches they played, you'd have studio presentation to accompany them.
Now, it did help that in the pre-centralised era, a lot of the time all five countries would kickoff at the same time, or at least at very similar times, and therefore shared build-ups wouldn't be particularly convenient when having to navigate Wales, Scotland, ROI, Northern Ireland and the other one. Particularly as what would likely happen is that whilst that other one would get their own coverage, the others would be consolidated somewhat into about two programmes, as opposed to four. However, you felt that Sky were definitely making the most of what their contract allowed - this was also around the time the nations had their U21 matches on there as well.
With that in mind, is it really too much to ask for that each individual nation can get its own build-up? If a bog-standard Championship match can get 45 minutes of prelude on a Friday night, I don't see why that can't be the case here as well for each country involved. Qualifiers alone have retreated into either shared build-ups (which don't work because there isn't really enough time to cover both teams) or, if you're particularly lucky, fifteen minutes in the studio beforehand. Friendlies are worse still - they barely even bother with studio coverage for those anymore, although of course if England were playing they'd be on for about an hour-and-a-half beforehand. Just lazy, in my book anyway. Having said all of that, I'm probably wrong in many respects - I imagine they're saving quite a bit of scratch for losing such luxuries.
As for the England women's contract - good on ITV I guess. Like Brekkie says I'm not sure where they'd put it however - ITV4 would be a safe bet, but also slightly odd considering it's a very traditionally masculine channel (not that sexism should play a part in the decision, of course). Maybe ITV2 could even be utilised, as I'd imagine the demographic for the women is younger than that of the men, and indeed would probably be more at home there in a strange counter-intuitive sort of way.
https://twitter.com/josepgoded/status/13...1549438977
Do broadcasters get the template of the UEFA graphics to create country names in their own language e.g. ESP in Spanish for Spain, DEU for Germany etc?
In this case TVE have added "kos" in lower case as they don't recognise it as a independent country.
A similar situation is BeIN's coverage of Israeli national team or club teams (in UEFA competition) matches, due to the rights restrictions I believe they must air the matches but do so on their 3rd English channel (never on Arabic language channels, no matter who the opposition is), don't advertise them games in any way and don't include them in highlight roundups of all the other games (e.g. in Europa League nights they don't even show the tables or results of the groups featuring say Maccabi Tel Aviv). They also omit Israel from news of competition draws so the group would show 5 teams not 6.
On their English channels they do mention the matches but for a qualifying round table would omit the flags next to country names for the group involving Israel.
Ste post_id=1494 time=1617226467 user_id=972 Wrote:https://twitter.com/josepgoded/status/13...1549438977
Do broadcasters get the template of the UEFA graphics to create country names in their own language e.g. ESP in Spanish for Spain, DEU for Germany etc?
It's quite likely that the domestic broadcaster in Spain was also the host broadcaster for the world feed, so of course would have the graphic templates available. Putting 'kos' in lowercase is little different from having a score bug in the broadcaster's own style for their channel and the league's style for the world.
In this case it might incur a bit of a hard stare from UEFA, whether that's for bringing politics into the game or for ignoring the (usually quite comprehensive) style book.
I understand that Saturday Night Football will return on location tonight from the King Power Stadium for Leicester v Manchester City from 5pm.
Edit: Or not..
BcastCornwall post_id=2448 time=1617445768 user_id=950 Wrote:Quick turnaround Sabine Schmitz tribute on BBC ONE next week, first on BBC iPlayer after Top Gear tomorrow ....
https://twitter.com/BBCStudiosPress/stat...5348753409
Indeed - kudos to the Top Gear production team for putting this together so quickly. From reading the article on the Top Gear website (linked from that tweet) it really will be a combination of eras (with Clarkson, Hammond and May making an appearance alongside Matt le Blanc and Rory Reid) - and quite right, too! This doesn't reflect well on the one former Top Gear presenter/producer (and man who booked Sabine as a full-time presenter for the 2016 series) who is not listed to appear (assuming that he has been asked).