Sunset+Vine was appointed the host broadcaster of the Caribbean Premier League through '20. The '18 edition takes place from Aug. 8-Sept. 16. Sunset+Vine will produce the world feed for the six-team competition -- a total of 34 matches taking place across seven countries -- as well as creating all pre- and post-match programming (Sunset+Vine).
Two pub directors and licensees were ordered to pay a record £327,405 ($426,200) for the illegal use of Sky transmissions. A total of four people who between them ran Prince of Wales in Stafford, the Beaufort Arms in Birmingham and the Pheasant Inn in Wolverhampton "were convicted of 64 offences after showing Sky Sports in their pubs without permission" (BROADBAND TV NEWS, 7/19).
WWE and Telekom Sport announced a multi-year agreement to broadcast WWE's flagship programs, Raw and SmackDown, in Romania. Every week beginning July 27, Telekom Sport 1 will air a two-hour version of Raw at 11pm on Fridays and SmackDown at 11pm on Sundays, both with Romanian commentary (WWE).
BBC Sport Northern Ireland agreed to a new three-year deal with SuperCupNI. The multi-platform deal kicks off with live coverage of the U19 challenge game between ManU and Celtic on Saturday. There will be 16 live games in total (BBC).
Alibaba Group's Alibaba Cloud entered a strategic partnership with two-time Formula 1 world champion Fernando Alonso to digitize the his karting business. The partnership was struck through Alonso's official global karting partner, Yi Qian Communications (Alibaba).
German broadcaster RTL will transmit four football matches live on its linear Ultra HD test channel. The first match will be the friendly between Bayern Munich and ManU in Munich on Aug. 5 (BROADBAND TV NEWS, 7/19).
U.S. Spanish-language digital media network JUGOtv signed a deal to become a content provider for the Int'l Champions Cup. JUGOtv will create, produce and distribute exclusive original content from the competition (SOCCEREX, 7/19).
Match TV signed a new four-year contract with the Russian Football Premier League. Kommersant reported the channel, which is owned by Gazprom Media, will pay 1.7B rubles ($27M) plus 250M rubles ($3.9M) production costs a year for the rights (BROADBAND TV NEWS, 7/19).
Czech DTH and IPTV operator Digi TV will launch another sports channel in time for the start of the upcoming football season. Although the company already has three proprietary channels -- Digi Sport 1 HD, Digi Sport 2 HD and Digi Sport 3 HD -- it secured the rights to Serie A and the FA Cup earlier this month and "no longer has enough capacity" (BROADBAND TV NEWS, 7/18).
