ITV

Tag: England Team

  • ESS locks in Uefa Champions League rights till 2009

    MUMBAI: Sports broadcaster ESPN Star Sports (ESS) continues to assert its supremacy in the international football arena. It has renewed the rights to Europe’s premier football league, the Uefa Champions League, for several territories, including India, in Asia.
    The new three-year agreement ensures that both ESPN and Star Sports will continue to televise the property through to the 2008-09 season. It also represents the continuation of a 13-year partnership between ESS and Uefa that has seen viewership for the League on the Asian sports network maintain a healthy upward trend year after year.
    Under the terms of the new deal, ESS gets exclusive live broadcast rights of the event in Hong Kong and China in addition to retaining cable and satellite rights across the network’s South East, North Asian territories and India. This agreement has also been expanded to include internet and broadband rights in a reflection of the evolving trends in sport viewing.
    ESS has a strong football line up which includes the World Cup rights for the Indian subcontinent, English Premier League, FA Cup, England Team home matches.
    Says ESS Asia MD Jamie Davis, “The renewal of our partnership with Uefa is of vital strategic importance as we continue to offer unparalleled sports programming to viewers across Asia through traditional and new media platforms. This new multi-year commitment will insure that we can invest more resources to further develop the Uefa Champions League’s brand and promote it to the fans across Asia. Our plans to enhance the broadcast and interactivity of the matches will provide the audience with coverage like they have never seen before.”
    ESS will provide season-long coverage from the early group stages through to the final which along with a range of support programming covering news, previews, player interviews and highlights shows. Factors such as the clubs’ unpredictable domestic performances coupled with colourful on and off the pitch drama have driven ratings, capturing larger audience shares in several markets with each passing season. In some metered markets, ratings have surpassed even the top cable programmes on other news, documentaries and action channels.
    The broadcaster adds that at the close of the 2004-2005 season, viewership for the Uefa Champions League on ESS had shown an increase of 3.4 per cent from the previous year, taking the total number of viewers in Asia well over the 100 million mark.

  • FA’s tender for intl TV rights

    LONDON: The Football Association (FA) has released the invitation to tender document for its overseas television rights for the period covering seasons 2004/20055 to 2007/2008.
    An official release informs that the key rights included in this package are the England Senior home internationals, England Under-21 home internationals, The FA Cup and The FA Community Shield. The FA is also looking to launch the process to appoint its first ever mobile and internet partners in the near future, covering both the UK and worldwide markets. In India the FA Cup aired earlier this year on Ten Sports.
    FA’s marketing and communications Paul Barber said, “The international profile of English football is extremely high and The FA wants to ensure this continues. The FA Cup is the most famous domestic cup competition in world football, with a tradition and international appeal that is unmatched. The cup final is currently broadcast in over 150 countries and has an audience of over 400 million.
    “The final will be returning to Wembley and this just adds to the excitement. We have great players from all over the world and they will all want to play at the new home of football in the FA Cup final and we want the world to watch them.
    “The England team is currently enjoying unprecedented levels of popularity abroad. Through the sale of our overseas television rights, The FA will ensure England’s home games can be seen the world over. Because of our wide role, revenues from the sale of these rights will go for the benefit of the game at every level.”