Former tennis player John McEnroe has joined Eurosport's French Open
commentary team. McEnroe completes Eurosport’s lineup covering the
Grand Slam and follows the recent signing of former tennis player Chris
Evert, who will headline her own French Open analysis show, "Tennis for
Evert." McEnroe will deliver commentary for seven matches on British
Eurosport. He also will participate in two editions of Eurosport’s
pan-European daily talk show "Game, Set and Mats," with fellow former
world No. 1 Mats Wilander (Eurosport). ... More Euro 2016 and 2018 World Cup qualification games "will come to Germany free-TV." German free-to-air TV channel RTL, which has the rights to all qualification games of the German national team, "announced that it will show eight games without German participation on sister channel RTL Nitro starting on June 14" (SID, 5/20). ... Formula E has further expanded its TV coverage with the addition of Telenet, the largest provider of cable TV in Belgium. The deal ensures that Formula E has coverage throughout the region with Telenet focusing on the northern, Flemish speaking side of Belgium, in addition to the existing arrangement with RTL, which covers the southern, French speaking side (Formula E). ... Bayern Munich teamed up with T-Mobile U.S. to announce it is bringing free access to the club's premium subscription channel, FCB.tv, to T-Mobile customers. FCB.tv's exclusive programming includes match highlights immediately following each match, replays of full live matches within 24 hours after each match, friendly matches, player interviews and exclusive behind-the-scenes footage (Bayern Munich).
THE NATIONAL TEAM: ONE World Sports announced that it has extended its multi-year agreement with Sky Sports for exclusive U.S. rights to England National Cricket team programming including pre- and post-match shows, in-match feature content and a daily highlights show surrounding its live coverage of the England National Cricket Team. ONE World Sports will present more than 500 hours of live and wrap-around cricket programming this summer, starting Thursday (ONE World Sports). ... Finnish company Elisa said that Elisa Entertainment "has procured the media rights" from UEFA regarding European Championships men's football tournament matches and the men's World Cup qualifying matches. Elisa Entertainment will also show the men's U21 European Championships matches from the Czech Republic (TELECOM PAPER, 5/18). ... Deutsche Telekom-owned Greek pay-TV operator OTE last week launched a new TV everywhere service, OTE Go, "making content available on smartphones and tablets." The service "includes OTE Replay TV catch-up content and OTE Cinema On Demand." The service "has been launched as a pilot to 50,000 subscribers" (DIGITAL TV EUROPE, 5/18). ... Motorsport.com LLC announced its acquisition of multimedia publishing company Edimotive S.r.l, Italy's online resource for motorsports and automotive news content. As part of the agreement, Motorsport.com acquires all Edimotive S.r.l assets of its daily web magazines and broadcasting, new media and digital webTV (Motorsport.com).
NEW VIEWING EXPERIENCE: Vodafone and La Liga side Valencia on Sunday rolled out a new technology capable of "bringing to fans' mobile phones five TV channels to make watching a game a unique experience." The technology was tested during a game against Celta Vigo and "was a success." Fans could "watch all types of details of the game, from inside the locker room, inside the bus during the team's arrival to the stadium, from the tunnel and from the bench." The live feed "was not the only one available: one included replays in virtual reality, another featured live statistics, another showed videos uploaded by the club and by fans, and the last was dedicated entirely to social media" (MARCA, 5/19).
