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News confirmed: No tennis on Eurosport in 2013 outside the slams

239K views 2K replies 288 participants last post by  leftyness 
#1 · (Edited)
There have been many rumours whether ES is going to broadcast tennis live next year outside the Slams. They will not continue so. Some fellow German posters and me contacted ES and they confirmed the sad news. The reason seems to be the WTA tour's new strategy to promote tennis rights decentrally as we have seen by some of the deals that have been made the last couple of weeks.

For Germany this is very likely to be the end of live tennis coverage on TV. Maybe Stuttgart is going to be broadcasted by another channel but I cannot imagine any other channel to buy the rights for all premier events to be honest. It seems to be a bit better in other countries as we have seen by the deals that have been made already.

For me personally, I will REALLY miss the English Eurosport commentators. They have accompanied me for years (actually more than a decade!) whenever I wanted to watch tennis, and I always preferred the Eurosport commentators over others. The fact to probably not hear them again in the same constellation is the saddest fact about the loss of TV rights. :sad:

EDIT

That's the mail a fellow poster and me both receieved


Quote from Eurosport Media GmbH

Quote:
Dear Mr xxx,
the way you have read and interpreted (the news) are correct. Eurosport will not broadcast the WTA Tour from 2013 onwards, because the contract with the WTA for a paneuropean broadcasting has not been extended. Tennis still remains an important sport in our programme. We will again broadcast three of the four Grand Slams (Australian, French and US Open) live and partly exclusive. Furthermore, we will show some selected ATP tournaments and perhaps one or another smaller WTA event. We are still negotating new rights packages, but cannot comment any further on the current situation yet.

Until the end of October we will still be live and exclusive on air on the way to and during the WTA Championchips.

Best,

xxxxx
Press & PR Manager
Eurosport Media GmbH
Original see below
Quote:
Zitat von Eurosport Media GmbH
Lieber Herr *******,

Es ist richtig, was Sie gelesen und daraus geschlossen haben. Eurosport wird ab 2013 die WTA Tour nicht mehr übertragen, da der Vertrag mit der WTA für eine paneuropäische Übertragung nicht verlängert wurde. Tennis bleibt trotzdem ein wichtiger Sport in unserem Programmangebot. Wir werden im kommenden Jahr mit den Australian, French und US Open wieder drei der vier Grand Slams live und teilweise exklusiv übertragen. Hinzu kommen ausgewählte Turniere der ATP Tour und vielleicht das eine oder andere kleinere WTA Turnier. Wir verhandeln über neue Rechtepakete, können über den aktuellen Stand an dieser Stelle aber noch nichts sagen.

Bis Ende Oktober sind wir aber auf dem Weg und während der WTA Tour Championships live und exklusiv dabei.

Liebe Grüße,

*********
Press & PR Manager
Eurosport Media GmbH
 
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#595 ·
tejmeglekvár - You may look at it like that but in this case is it Eurosport not wanting the rights or is it the WTA being unable or willing to met Eurosports position?
 
#596 ·
While we do not know the exact details of the dealings between Eurosport & the WTA(and/or it's representatives in media rights), the existing deal of exclusive European rights both for television and online via Eurosport player was not an option once the WTA entered into a deal with IEC/Perform. Perform are the people behind tennistv.com. What possibly happened is ES were offered the rights at a higher price than before, and they refused to pay. IEC then went seeking other broadcasters, the thinking being they'd secure a higher price from multiple deals. While they may have gotten more money, a lot of Europe will have no tv coverage as of now. Apart from MCS (France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Portugal, Israel) and Sport1 (The Nederlands, forgive me if I have the wrong station name!), has anyone else got coverage? A UK deal seems set, but it's a mystery buyer! The WTA has perhaps over-estimated how attracted broadcasters would be to women's tennis.

If Eurosport wanted to cease tennis coverage, then their coverage of 3 of the 4 majors would end too.
 
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#638 ·
I was wondering how much the monthly subscription was to the TBA channel - and do I need a special box to receive it?;)

Seriously two weeks to go and still no confirmed broadcasters for Germany and the UK - two of the biggest nations in Europe with amongst the most fans.

As has been pointed out who is going to sponsor a WTA event which isn't on TV in the biggest markets?
 
#615 ·
Wow, that page sums it up all up.... :eek:
 
#619 ·
After the big announcements by MCS about theirs buying the rights for WTA in Europe, the schedule has been revealed.
Only 50% of the Hopman Cup covered, and only 2 QF and 1 SF live from Brisbane (all other matches showed delayed): how much of a joke is that?!
I think we should all turn our attention to tennistv.com, but I'm too afraid it's gonna be blocked in France because of MCS having bought the rights for my territory.
 
#631 ·
Seriously, two weeks to go and no announcement. Exactly what I DIDN'T want. It has to be said though but we're all a bit of flops in this situation too. We're all pissed off but only a couple emailed/tweeted anyone. Any other fanbase would have kicked up a storm. There was more of an outrage about Court's comments earlier in the year.
 
#641 ·
What baffles me the most is supposedly there is a deal already done for the UK. So why on earth has there been no press release, no confirmation who it is with, no nothing. The tour starts in 2 weeks, it's looking heavily likely right now that we're going into Brisbane with nobody showing it. Probably in their minds this is no big miss, because these events are on through the night, and get few viewers.

But really this is just not good for the tour. The majority of people will still think the tour is being shown on Eurosport and have no idea it isn't. And why wouldn't they, when there is no information out there saying otherwise. They have either way overestimated the popularity of the tour or have something big planned imminently.

Really though the only channel that would drum up interest this quickly for them would be Sky Sports, who would put out press releases on Sky Sports News etc, alerting people. Sky are very good at this. If as expected it ends up on BT Vision in a couple of weeks, it's hard to imagine many people will have any idea.
 
#643 · (Edited)
By the way it's playing out it seems almost certain that BT Vision have the rights and since they're not launching their sports channels until, I think, summer 2013, there's not too much urgency for them to announce anything yet. There are still quite a few things that aren't fully clear about what BT are doing in general, so I would expect to hear something when exact dates and details of their sports service are released and they're actually starting to advertise their channels.

I don't really understand what petitions and bombarding people with emails will do. In this case, it's BT's (or whoever has the rights) decision that they haven't announced it yet, so the WTA can't do anything.

As for me personally, I only have freeview so I've never been able to watch WTA outside of the slams on TV anyway so I'm not really bothered. Online streaming is ultimately the way forward - in a few years we'll all have smart TVs and be streaming everything anyway. The main issue I can see right now is that the lack of coverage in many European countries is going to make it harder for the WTA to attract a title sponsor, which definitely is a problem.
 
#642 ·
Maybe we should bombard WTA on Twitter. This is really ridiculous.
Just like ozza said, most people do not even realize Eurosport lost the broadcasting rights. Heck, I wouldn't know if I weren't on this forum as there was NO announcement. The tour starts in less than 2 weeks now and we still know s**t!
 
#645 ·
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