ESPN BUYS SLEW OF S. AMERICAN MEDIA RIGHTS FOR '10 AND '12 GAMES

By John Ourand & Tripp Mickle, Staff Writers, SportsBusiness Journal

ESPN picked up the '10 Vancouver and '12 London Olympic rights for several South American markets. The deal includes broadcast TV and radio rights in Argentina, plus cable and satellite rights in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. The deal also includes satellite-only TV rights in Venezuela. "This agreement expands our relationship with the IOC and adds the Olympics to the schedule of world class events we cover," said ESPN Int'l Exec VP & Managing Dir Russell Wolff, who negotiated the deal with IOC Exec Board member Richard Carrión.

South and Central American rights holder and regional representative OTI (Organización de TelevisiónIberoamericana) paid $29.75M for the rights to the '06 Turin and '08 Beijing Games. Those rights included every country in South America for that quadrennial. But for the '09-12 period, the IOC sold the rights for Brazil separately and collected $60M. ESPN would not say how much they spent on the rights.