The Sport Thread

[Rdd]

And in one of the least surprising announncments in sportscasting history, Mike Tirico will succeed Al Michaels as NBC's Sunday Night Football lead commentator.

https://nbcsportsgrouppressbox.com/2022/...-football/

The bookies won’t have lost much money on that  - more surprising, however, is Melissa Stark taking up the sideline reporter role vacated by Michele Tafaoya rather than the heavily favoured Kathryn Tapppen.

It’s going to be a very changed look for the NFL on TV next season, with only CBS retaining the same #1 commentary team as last season (though NBC is keeping Cris Collinsworth). The draft is tonight at 1am and Sky are currently doing a live build up show with Neil Reynolds and Jeff Reinbold.

[melpax]

In Australia, the AFL football broadcast & streaming rights are up for negotiation.

Currently the 7 network has the broadcast rights, while Foxtel has the pay TV & streaming rights. League execs are currently in the US talking to Amazon, and also to Paramount. Network 10 execs have also travelled to New York for the discussions, with strong rumors here that the rights might end up being won by a Paramount+/Network 10 bid. If Foxtel lose the right to show AFL, this would have to be a fatal blow to them, as a lot of people here only have a Foxtel subscription to watch the football.

https://www.theage.com.au/business/compa...5adbe.html

A history of the VFL/AFL broadcast rights up to 2011

http://www.footyindustry.com/?page_id=597

[Brekkie]

Isn't really much movement in sports rights in Australia - apart from a 5 year period from 2001 shared between Channel 9/10 that list shows Seven have basically been the FTA broadcaster of AFL for 50 odd years. More likely to be movement in the pay TV market now I guess, especially with Telstra buying a controlling stake in streaming platform Fetch TV this week.

Obviously some things do change but Channel 7 pretty much regretted swapping the tennis for cricket before the ink was dry on the contract.

[melpax]

Isn't really much movement in sports rights in Australia - apart from a 5 year period from 2001 shared between Channel 9/10 that list shows Seven have basically been the FTA broadcaster of AFL for 50 odd years. More likely to be movement in the pay TV market now I guess, especially with Telstra buying a controlling stake in streaming platform Fetch TV this week.

Obviously some things do change but Channel 7 pretty much regretted swapping the tennis for cricket before the ink was dry on the contract.

There's been a lot of talk here in Melbourne about the discussions with Paramount/10, this would have to put pressure on Foxtel to put in a competitive bid. Losing the rights to show AFL would be a potentially fatal blow to them, given it's now the only reason a lot of people maintain a Foxtel subscription.

With the tennis, I think you're right, 7 & 9 will probably do a swap with the tennis & cricket.

[RhysJR]

[Tom]

Some lovely tributes and some great archive footage for Sky Sports for Chris Kamara who is a legend in my opinion.

[Steve in Pudsey]

Wouldn't have happened in Whispering Ted's day

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eurospo...-amp.shtml

Referee at the Crucible bangs on "host broadcaster studio window" to shut noise up

[UTVLifer]

[RhysJR]

[Tom]

I am right in saying for the Croatia v England (first qualifying game for the 2010 World Cup), ITV grabbed late minute highlights and Matt Smith had to present the highlights from the Granada Reports studio. Also, for the last England game of the 2010 World Cup qualifiers (Ukraine away) was rhat the game with was broadcast on the internet after Setanta went bust and BBC had highlights and again a last minute deal was struck

Yes, the Ukraine highlights were offered very late in the day, I assume one of the conditions of getting them was that it wasn't announced until the match had kicked off to grab every last potential customer, so the news there would be highlights was announced by Bruce Forsyth on Strictly. A great moment, that.

To be pedantic, England's first qualifer for 2010 was Andorra away, on a Saturday night, and there were no highlights of that, with the crowd chanting "we hate Setanta". There was still no deal in place for Croatia away on the Wednesday, and then the clamour got even greater when England won handsomely, and they did a last minute deal with ITV for highlights on the Thursday. As you say, they were presented from the Granada Reports studio and as they'd replaced two half hour shows in the schedule, there were ad breaks during the halves. I remember reading Clive Tyldesley did an off-tube commentary on the Wednesday before the deal was struck, just in case.

Would be fascinated to see Setanta's coverage of that Croatia match again, as they were at the ground but their studio was actually overlooking the car park rather than the pitch and you could see endless buses arriving behind Angus Scott's head. Looked bizarre. Pretty much the last thing they showed was Khazakstan away in June 2009 and I remember that at the last minute they'd decided Khazakh TV coverage wouldn't be good enough so they flew over their own crew to do it all themselves.

Everyone's forgotten about Setanta these days, haven't they?

Did Bruce say it will be nice to see the highlights, to see them nice.

[RhysJR]

[valley]

Quite hard to fathom that it's four weeks to the day that the next UEFA Nations League/UEFA internationals rights cycle begins and, apart from England matches, there is no broadcast deal in place for any matches in the UK. From what I can see, the same applies (obviously for the England matches too) in other countries like France and Italy. Only yesterday was an agreement announced with RTL for the rights in Germany.

Interestingly as of December 2021 Sky Sports were saying "you will be able to watch all 162 group games, plus the semi-finals, third-place play-off and final live on Sky Sports." Someone must've been confused - or a deal fell through?

[RhysJR]

[thegeek]

BT Sport missing the first nine or ten seconds of the first half of extra time with a ususal length ad break taking place between full time and extra time.

The ad break was the right length - it's the referee who started early! (UEFA stipulate 5 minutes between the end of normal time and the start of extra time, but it was only 4 today.)

[RhysJR]