Sky Sports have announced a deal with Golden Boy Promotions to show all the company’s big fights from the States. The first fight card on the contract is the Marcos Maidana v Devon Alexander bout on the 3rd March, followed by Mexican legend Erik Morales v Danny Garcia on the 24th March, and the still-to-be-rearranged Victor Ortiz v Andre Berto rematch. Many have been critical over Sky’s recent lack of big fights from the US over recent years, but this deal shows a commitment to boxing for the forseeable future.
Elsewhere, Sky have confirmed a number of other big fights coming up separate from the Golden Boy deal. Firstly, Wladimir Klitschko defends his Heavyweight title belts against Jean-Marc Mormeck also on the 3rd March in Germany, while two weeks later Matthew Macklin faces a huge ask as he takes on Middleweight champion Sergio Martinez in New York. Finally, Amir Khan will get the chance to avenge his defeat to Lamont Peterson in a rematch on the 19th May.
More boxing, and Channel 5 are back on the scene on the 18th February with a Hennessy Sports card headlined by exciting prospect Kid Galahad challenging former world title challenger Jason Booth at Super Bantamweight. On the undercard is Chris Eubank Jr’s second fight.
Channel 4 will show the Indoor UK Athletics Trials and Championships on Sunday 12th February, with live coverage from the track finals. It is their first foray in to the sport since their disastrous coverage of last year’s IAAF World Championships. Ortis Deley is nowhere to be seen as Rick Edwards presents.
And finally this week, Sunday’s Super Bowl saw a victory for Eli Manning and the New York Giants, but the headlines for many was some woman sticking her middle finger up during the half-time show. But my highlight was this, the extended version of a Honda commercial shown during the game-an absolute must see for fans of 80’s John Hughes comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Enjoy:
Sky Sports and ITV have decided upon the split of live matches for the last 16, first leg stage of this year’s UEFA Champions League.
Once again, the first legs of the eight matches are split up over two weeks, with two matches per day over the round. ITV will show one first-pick match from each Wednesday, leaving Sky with the remaining six. The second legs follow the same format, with ITV’s picks still to be decided.
Next Wednesday (15th), ITV1 will be at San Siro for the potential firecracker between Milan and Arsenal, while the following week the channel will broadcast Marseille v Inter Milan.
The only other English team to make it through to this round is Chelsea, and they also face a trip to Italy to face Napoli on Tuesday 21st February on Sky Sports. Sky will also show the rest of the fixtures from this stage live, with Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich all in action.
Rally Sweden will be shown on Motors TV after the prganisers confirmed that there will be coverage of this weekend’s event available to viewers outside the host country.
Rally Sweden CEO Glenn Olsson said: “We are doing this for all our fans to save the championship and its organisers and teams, and not least for our own sake and our sponsors. This is a multi-million [euro] project and, as we are not ready with the economics, this is very hazardous for us.”
Motors TV will show nightly highlights at 10.35pm. A short spectator stage begins the rally later tonight, with the main bulk of it taking place between Friday and Sunday. Viewers should expect the coverage to be significantly different from the Eurosport-produced Monte Carlo Rally which opened the season last month.
The World Rally Championship remains in turmoil after talks between the governing body FIA and Eurosport over television production and distribution of the series broke down.
However, both parties walked away from the table last week, leaving Rally Sweden, the second round of this year’s championship beginning on Friday currently without any international television coverage.
It is believed the sticking point relates to European employment law. Under the statute, should Eurosport take over as commercial rights holders then they would be required to take on the North One staff laid off by the termination of their contract, something the broadcaster seems reluctant to do.
This meant the FIA were forced to tell event organisers that they were responsible for finalising their own deals for television coverage on a rally-by-rally basis.
A ridiculously wordy statement from WRC Commission president Jarmo Mahonen told them: “Despite very lengthy negotiations with Eurosport, we sincerely regret to have to inform you that, unfortunately, it has not been possible to conclude an agreement even when trying to give them the possibility to act as a provider of services, providing television coverage of the WRC.
“Therefore, the FIA will not be able to put in place a global promoter, or even global television coverage at this time. As a result, each WRC organiser will unfortunately have to negotiate the television broadcasting of his event.”
Local terrestrial station SVT will cover the Swedish Rally in the host country, but the organisers face a race against time to sort a deal out for viewers in the rest of the world.
This is the latest disaster for a championship that has suffered numerous setbacks over the last decade. The public have grown tired of Sebastien Loeb’s (above) dominance (eight titles in a row), and the number of manufacturers backing the series has dropped. Meanwhile, interest in the UK has diminished to practically zero following the sad deaths of Colin McRae and Richard Burns, and the lack of any sort of successor to them.
This latest fiasco, if not resolved shortly could well be the final nail in the coffin for the WRC as we know it.
Now that the dire UEFA Europa League group stages are over, we reach the knockout stages. Channel 5, ITV and ESPN have decided upon the live matches they will be showing from the first leg of the last 32 fixtures.
Channel 5 have the first pick, and have unsurprisingly gone for Manchester United’s trip to Ajax on Thursday 16th February at 6pm. This moves them away from their usual 8.05pm slot, but United at 6pm means more viewers than pretty much any other side playing in the late kick-off. Both these sides were eliminated from the group stages of the Champions League, so move to this competition.
As were Manchester City and Porto, who meet on ITV1 at 8.05pm that night. This match has been bumped up from ITV4, the usual home of the broadcaster’s Europa League coverage. That channel has Legia Warsaw v Sporting Lisbon earlier in the evening.
That leaves Stoke City’s tough game against Valencia on ESPN, along with a couple of all-continental ties including Lazio v Atletico Madrid.
The new Sky Sports F1 channel will also show GP2 and GP3 live. The two feeder series to Formula 1 run for the most part parallel to the main championship, with GP2 having 12 rounds and GP3 just the 8 rounds. Each weekend features two races, both of which will be live on the new channel. There is no news on fellow support series Porsche Supercup, so that is expected to remain on Eurosport.
Sky have also confirmed that their Formula 1 magazine programme with Georgie Thompson and Ted Kravitz will be shown weekly.
ITV are expected to release football commentator Peter Drury and co-commentator Jim Beglin after Euro 2012 this summer. Former Irish international Beglin has been steadily phased out of his duties over the last couple of years as Andy Townsend has become more prominent, while the decision to drop Drury is more surprising. With ITV’s Champions League coverage moving to Tuesday nights, it means number 1 commentator Clive Tyldesley can easily do that match before travelling to wherever for a Europa League game on the Thursday. As the channel will still need more than one commentator, they could still keep Drury on as a freelancer unless he moves to another network full time.
Sky Sports will show the Tony Bellew v Danny McIntosh fight for the British Light Heavyweight title after promoter Dave Coldwell won the purse bids and joined forces with Matchroom Sport to provide a TV date. Bellew (right) is signed to Frank Warren Promotions, who are a major player behind the rival BoxNation channel. After the announcement this week, Bellew said: “It’s a dream come true to be back on Sky Sports.” Don’t think his promoter will be too chuffed after hearing that.
The Super League season starts this weekend. The early list of live matches on Sky can be seen here.
Interestingly, from May Sky will be showing their secondary live match per round on a Monday night rather than a Saturday evening. This is down to the channel wanting more live sport on a Monday once the football season has ended during the summer. The now-traditional Friday night slot will stay untouched.
Two of England’s rugby matches in the Women’s Six Nations will be shown live on television this year, with a third available online with a free, legal stream. First, on the 25th February the game against Wales will be on the BBC red button at 6.15pm. On the 11th March, England’s trip to France will be on the Sky Sports red button service at 12.45pm, while their final match against Ireland will be live on the RFU website on the 17th March at 2pm.
The live matches for the fifth round of the FA Cup have been confirmed.
The two fixtures on ITV1 see League Two Stevenage welcome Premier League outfit Spurs to Broadhall Way on the 19th February, and the winners of the Sunderland and Middlesbrough replay hosting Arsenal the previous evening.
As usual, ESPN will have three live matches, starting with Chelsea v Birmingham on the Saturday lunchtime, followed by everybody’s least favourite team Crawley against Stoke and Liverpool v Brighton on the Sunday.
That will be a very busy day with three games back-to-back across the two broadcasters.
The biannual merry-go-round that is football’s transfer deadline day has more than a hint of the ‘end of the world’ feel about it, and as usual, the media treated it as something that important.
Sky Sports had been counting down to the end of the window ever since it was first prised open at the start of January, with a ticking clock at the corner of the screen like it was counting down to the apocalypse, while some bloke stood at the big touch screen ‘Sky Pad’ pretty much 24/7 waiting for anything remotely interesting to happen. But they went in to overdrive in the last week with a hideously over-the-top promo showing their presenters and reporters seemingly gearing up for Judgment Day.
Sky have a habit of massively over-hyping an event that more often than not, disappoints. For example, they can’t even mention Liverpool and Newcastle United in the same breath without referring to those two 4-3 matches between the teams 15 years ago. Just because they had a couple of thrillers back then means absolutely nothing when they face each other today. It is a similar thing here.
Jim White (left), a man described by a Sky press release as ‘Mr Deadline Day’ was, as always their main man for the situation, and he was given the prime presenting slot as the deadline passed. It was an odd day, given the fact that all of the Premier League title contenders were in action that evening, meaning the transfer window was almost forgotten about for a couple of hours. But never fear, as the final whistles blew around the country, we all switched over to White, anxious to see if there were to be any eleventh hour shocks. Would Tevez leave Manchester City? Would Stoke sign anyone? And most importantly, would Nuneaton Town poach Lionel Messi from Barcelona?
With the clock running down towards the 11pm deadline, White was in full-on shouty mode, giving it all the gusto of a man entrusted with the world’s final television broadcast. He was discussing what awaited us at the end of the world with expert doom-mongers Iain Dowie and Dave Bassett.
When Big Ben did strike 11, unsurprisingly nothing happened and we all survived. Some bizarre firework sound effects greeted us in to the apocalypse, along with the faces of Bobby Zamora, Djibril Cisse and various other movers projected on to Big Ben.
The nature of the transfer window means that deals might not necessarily be finalised or publicised at bang on 11pm, giving us a half-hour spell where we wait to see the full effects of the event and what lies ahead for us.
Meanwhile, the BBC (quite fittingly considering the nature of their Premier League rights) didn’t cover deadline day live on television, but instead devoted the last 10 minutes of Match of the Day towards the transfers. Gary Lineker and co. handed over to Dan Walker, Ian Dennis and Martin Keown (right) to round-up the news, and after a brief video package, ‘that bloke off the Walkers ads’, Lee Dixon and Alan Hansen had all disappeared from their seats without warning-hopefully the first victims of the apocalypse.
The BBC’s trump card for days like this is the text commentary on their website. Calling it ‘journalism’ would be a bit of an exaggeration, as it mainly seems to be people retweeting other rumours or witty messages from elsewhere. But who am I to criticise it when it seems to be hugely popular, turning news and events in to bite-size nuggets that the casual surfer at work wants.
In the end, nobody really had much to talk about, as this deadline day consisted mainly of middling players either joining or leaving middling teams.
The Mayans might believe the end of the world will happen on the 21st December 2012, but the big date football fans will be circling in their calendars to try and survive will be the 31st August-the next transfer deadline day. If they can survive that then apocalypse should be a piece of cake.
Sky Sports will show all of England’s home internationals and county cricket until 2017, while highlights will remain on Channel 5 after both broadcasters renewed their contracts with the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
Nothing will change for viewers, with the same amount of cricket being shown as under the current deal that expires at the end of the 2013 season. While disappointingly for non-subscribers all live action will remain on Sky, at least some solace can be found in the security of daily free-to-air highlights for the next six years.
The contract covers the 2015 Ashes series, as well as tours to the country by India (2014), Pakistan (2016), and South Africa (2017). Also included is county cricket, and Sky will continue to show at least 60 live matches across whatever various competitions the ECB are putting their name to until the contract expires.
This was an open tender process where anybody was invited to bid for the rights, but as part of this deal Sky will have the first option on extending their contract for a further two years if they wish. That will cover series against India in 2018, and Australia in 2019.
The deal made simple:
Runs from the 2014-2017 seasons, and Sky have the option of a further two-year extension
All of England’s home Test matches, One-Day Internationals, and Twenty20 matches will be exclusively live on Sky Sports
Highlights of the above will be shown on Channel 5
At least 60 live county matches across all competitions will be shown live on Sky Sports, plus selected England Women and Lions fixtures
The two replays from the FA Cup fourth round to be televised on ITV1 and ESPN have been selected.
ITV have the first pick, and unsurprisingly have gone for the North East derby between Middlesbrough and Sunderland on the 8th February. They showed the original tie at the weekend which finished 1-1. The winner of the replay faces a tough test against Arsenal in the fifth round, a match that will also be live on ITV1.
With only two other replays for ESPN to pick from, they went for Sheffield Wednesday against Blackpool on the previous evening. The two sides also drew 1-1 in the first match, and the winner will travel to Goodison Park to face Everton in mid-February.
Sky Sports have announced a deal with Golden Boy Promotions to show all the company’s big fights from the States. The first fight card on the contract is the Marcos Maidana v Devon Alexander bout on the 3rd March, followed by Mexican legend Erik Morales v Danny Garcia on the 24th March, and the still-to-be-rearranged Victor Ortiz v Andre Berto rematch. Many have been critical over Sky’s recent lack of big fights from the US over recent years, but this deal shows a commitment to boxing for the forseeable future.
After the news that Rally Sweden will be shown on Motors TV, ESPN have confirmed that they will be showing this weekend’s second round of the World Rally Championship. The channel broadcast the entire season last year, but their contract was voided when the FIA ended their contract with previous commercial rights holders North One Sports after the company went in to administration.
Sky Sports and ITV have decided upon the split of live matches for the last 16, first leg stage of this year’s UEFA Champions League.
Rally Sweden will be shown on Motors TV after the prganisers confirmed that there will be coverage of this weekend’s event available to viewers outside the host country.
The World Rally Championship remains in turmoil after talks between the governing body FIA and Eurosport over television production and distribution of the series broke down.
This meant the FIA were forced to tell event organisers that they were responsible for finalising their own deals for television coverage on a rally-by-rally basis.
Local terrestrial station SVT will cover the Swedish Rally in the host country, but the organisers face a race against time to sort a deal out for viewers in the rest of the world.
Now that the dire UEFA Europa League group stages are over, we reach the knockout stages. Channel 5, ITV and ESPN have decided upon the live matches they will be showing from the first leg of the last 32 fixtures.
The new Sky Sports F1 channel will also show GP2 and GP3 live. The two feeder series to Formula 1 run for the most part parallel to the main championship, with GP2 having 12 rounds and GP3 just the 8 rounds. Each weekend features two races, both of which will be live on the new channel. There is no news on fellow support series Porsche Supercup, so that is expected to remain on Eurosport.
The live matches for the fifth round of the FA Cup have been confirmed.
Jim White (left), a man described by a Sky press release as ‘Mr Deadline Day’ was, as always their main man for the situation, and he was given the prime presenting slot as the deadline passed. It was an odd day, given the fact that all of the Premier League title contenders were in action that evening, meaning the transfer window was almost forgotten about for a couple of hours. But never fear, as the final whistles blew around the country, we all switched over to White, anxious to see if there were to be any eleventh hour shocks. Would Tevez leave Manchester City? Would Stoke sign anyone? And most importantly, would Nuneaton Town poach Lionel Messi from Barcelona?
Meanwhile, the BBC (quite fittingly considering the nature of their Premier League rights) didn’t cover deadline day live on television, but instead devoted the last 10 minutes of Match of the Day towards the transfers. Gary Lineker and co. handed over to Dan Walker, Ian Dennis and Martin Keown (right) to round-up the news, and after a brief video package, ‘that bloke off the Walkers ads’, Lee Dixon and Alan Hansen had all disappeared from their seats without warning-hopefully the first victims of the apocalypse.
Sky Sports will show all of England’s home internationals and county cricket until 2017, while highlights will remain on Channel 5 after both broadcasters renewed their contracts with the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
The contract covers the 2015 Ashes series, as well as tours to the country by India (2014), Pakistan (2016), and South Africa (2017). Also included is county cricket, and Sky will continue to show at least 60 live matches across whatever various competitions the ECB are putting their name to until the contract expires.
The two replays from the FA Cup fourth round to be televised on ITV1 and ESPN have been selected.
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