Sky Italia Soccer Broadcast Rights Blocked

Will there be yet another round in the Murdoch vs Berlusconi match? A Milan appeals court blocked the awarding of broadcast rights for football (soccer) matches the next two seasons to Sky Italia, which is a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Italy's football association, Lega Calcio, had awarded six exclusive packages of broadcast rights to Serie A's matches called "A Platinum Live" for the 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 seasons in July. On Wednesday Lega Calcio released a statement saying that it was surprised by the Corte d'Appello di Milano ruling and has plans to appeal. The award of the package is believed to have netted the league some $1.709 billion.

In other Sky Italia news, it has a reported $37 million decrease in revenues, as elevated programming costs brought the operating income to only $128 million. Subscriber numbers remained stable for the second consecutive quarter of this year at 4.8 million.

6 Nov 2009 - 09:27 by soullezz

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Eutelsat Revenue Growth; NSR Tops 114mil DTH Subs; Globalstar completes construction; HBP Asia deal with Telesat

Eutelsat’s revenues grew by more than 11.6%, totaling €226.7 million for the third quarter. The operator now broadcasts over 3,000 channels inlcuding over 100 in HD throughout Europe, Russia and the Middle East.

NSR reports that nearly 100 Direct-to-Home (DTH) platforms were broadcasting over 13,000 TV channels to more than 114 million subs at the end of 2008, bringing an estimated $65 billion in revenues for that sector. Additionally, subscribers have increasing access to HD channels, DVRs and VOD services.

Globalstar Inc has completed construction of the new gateway ground station in Nigeria. The gateway will provide satellite coverage to Nigeria, parts of Western and Central Africa and the coastal Atlantic and Gulf of Guinea region.

HBO Asia has penned a multi-year deal with Telesat which allows HBO Asia to distribute HDTV to Telesat's customers via Telstar 18.

6 Nov 2009 - 09:21 by soullezz

Industry News |

Revenues up for DirecTV

DIRECTV came out of the third quarter like a lion on the cash flow front, with free cash flow up by 94% to a new record of $643 million. Revenue growth was also firm and on that always-critical subscriber gain index DIRECTV made a net increase of 136,000 in the U.S. and 162,000 in its Latin American division.

Interim CEO Larry Hunter attributed the U.S. growth primarily to the marketing partnership with AT&T plus record breaking demand for HD and DVR services. Hunter additionally accorded that two-thirds of all new subs in the quarter signed up for one or both of those services.

6 Nov 2009 - 09:14 by soullezz

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