English football presenter Rebecca Lowe signed a six-year contract "to host NBC Sport's coverage of the Premier League" in the U.S. through '22. NBC "did a deal for two rights cycles" when it extended its agreement with the Premier League -- one of the first to be signed out of the £3B ($4.2B) rights haul from overseas. NBC has shown the "same faith in Lowe," 35, who has made a name for herself in the U.S. since working for Setanta on its short-lived Premier League partnership. Her deal "is understood to be worth" around $1M a year (London DAILY MAIL, 2/28).
OVER 1M: Over 1 million tweets were posted about Sunday's Capital One Cup Final between Man City and Liverpool as The Football League utilized new technology for the first time in the U.K. to develop two new social engagement campaigns. Significant engagement for the Cup Final was driven by The Football League's #ShirtOfSupport and #FinalCam campaigns. According to data provided by Kantar Media, the match was one of the most talked about sporting events on Twitter across the weekend, attracting more than five times as many tweets as the England vs. Ireland Six Nations rugby match (The Football League).
MOTION DENIED: The Irish Congress "strongly backed" the Gaelic Athletic Association subscription deal with Sky Sports by defeating a Dublin motion to make all televised championship matches available free-to-air. The margin was 85% to 15%. Dublin delegate Ken O'Sullivan had proposed the motion, saying that the association "was built on inclusion and solidarity" and that subscription TV makes "the older and poorer considerably less likely to be able to watch" matches. The arguments against "centered on the inadvisability of tying the GAA's hands on the negotiation of media rights" (IRISH TIMES, 2/27).
BRIEFLY ...
GolTV secured the exclusive U.S. broadcast rights for the 2016 Coppa Italia semifinals and championship match. The first of two semifinal contests will be on March 1 at 3pm between Milan and Alessandria. The second match will be played on March 2 at 2:45pm between Inter and reigning champion Juventus (GolTV).
Sport1 will continue to follow the fortunes of the German men's handball team. Sport1 GmbH acquired the platform-neutral distribution rights to a variety of home games of the German national team this year for Germany (exclusively), Austria and Switzerland from the German Handball Federation (DHB) and Lagardère Sports Germany GmbH. As part of the deal, Sport1 will be live and exclusive on German free-TV when Germany takes on Qatar on March 13 (Sport1).
Digital and broadcast sports specialist deltatre announced the opening of a new office in Tokyo, Japan. The subsidiary adds to the firm's existing APAC offices in Singapore, Mumbai and Sydney. The choice to establish a direct presence in one of the fastest growing markets is to bring the firm's expertise closer to its local customer base (deltatre).
