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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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#5 ·
If I can watch the majority of matches of the high-end WTA events on streams instead of only six matches total on TV, because the rest of the matches are blocked by the TV stations, I´ll gladly take that.
 
#10 ·
WTA had to act imho. If ES rather shows summer ski-jumping over a WTA-Tour semifinal/final then you have to protect your product. They basically gave the WTA no priority or protection. From handball to motorsports to youth football to snooker to summer ski-jumping. What´s next? Snow long-jumping over the WTA Championships? I won´t miss ES coverage.
 
#14 ·
Well, tennis has definitely been outsourced a lot ever since ES 2 was on air. ES themselves had always stated they had never aired more tennis than in the respective year though. I for sure will miss it. I don't mind streams but if I can enjoy tennis on my 40'' HDTV, then I will.
On the other hand, ES did not pay a lot to the WTA tour so I can somehow understand their new strategy. Maybe ES just can't afford a massive increase of money to pay the WTA as much as they would have liked.
 
#11 · (Edited)
OMG. :bigcry: I grew up watching tennis on Eurosport, more than a decade for me too... :awww:

How does WTA think? For sure the majority of Europeans followed tennis on Eurosport (at least in Scandinavia). Now we have to search for shitty streams the whole year? And they talk about reaching out to more people, yeah right...
 
#24 ·
Official source please? Can you post the mail that you received?
 
#43 · (Edited)
I don't think there will be an official source because nobody basically officially announces the end of a deal I guess.
A fellow German poster and me received exactly the same mail which I am going to translate here.


Quote from Eurosport Media GmbH

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
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
 
#26 ·
No regrets from me. They've never aired matches I wanted to see, so I based nearly solely on streams. Only thing I wonder- if tennis is gone, then WHATS left on Eurosport ?
 
#34 ·
Please... Tomaszewski senior and Tomaszewski junior love her. I don't know only if Nowak loves her too :confused:
 
#31 ·
This is just a bad move, ES is the main sports channel across Europe, it is easily accessible too without having to pay high fees for watching it. In the UK, I know I am not paying £30+ a month to buy SkySports subscription now, it's way too expensive. Sorry WTA, but now on you just killed the game for European fans. Most of us will probably be left with watching low quality streams online without paying you a penny. Why don't they create a separate WTA tv channel instead and offer it to broadcasters? It would be way much better, or at least for God's sake let us buy a subscription online! As for now most European countries are blocked from accessing it.
 
#49 ·
This is just a bad move, ES is the main sports channel across Europe, it is easily accessible too without having to pay high fees for watching it. In the UK, I know I am not paying £30+ a month to buy SkySports subscription now, it's way too expensive. Sorry WTA, but now on you just killed the game for European fans. Most of us will probably be left with watching low quality streams online without paying you a penny. Why don't they create a separate WTA tv channel instead and offer it to broadcasters? It would be way much better, or at least for God's sake let us buy a subscription online! As for now most European countries are blocked from accessing it.
1. Which actually means so far WTA sold the product for peanuts. Shame on them not doing it anymore...

2. Who would pay that separate TV channel? Right...

3. And that is basically Eurosport's fault.
 
#32 ·
I dont think Sky will touch it as it will ruin their Masters coverage which is at same time as the WTA big events.
 
#58 ·
Why is everyone so sure that there will even be streams available? What if it's like the US Open Series tournaments (e.g. Stanford, Cincinnati) where there's never any streams whatsoever for the first few days simply because no broadcasters want the rights for them? Eurosport was the ONLY broadcaster for quite a few of the big tournaments.



I suppose like Sammy said it's possible they'll buy the rights for the WTA matches at the big combined ATP/WTA tournaments - although even then they'd only show women's matches if it wasn't clashing with one of the marquee ATP names. No way will they buy something that isn't a combined tournament and actually dedicate airtime SOLELY to the WTA though.
 
#33 ·
So German and Dutch (international) ES won't show WTA next year.
Thank god Sport 1 (Dutch channel) got WTA rights :hearts:
 
#69 ·
Well unless Sport1 uses one of the extra channels there will be quite a few clashes between ATP and WTA tournaments taking place. I'm really curious about how this will work out next year. Also Sport1 costs 15 euros a month whereas the ES coverage was almost free (for HD and ES2 you do need to have extra channel packages).

In my opinion it's a very poor decision. The coverage on ES isn't perfect but they do show a lot tennis throughout the year. I'll be missing their coverage. I always enjoyed the English commentary, which will be one of the hardest things to get used to on Sport1.
 
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