News Broadcasting
Sportcal.com seminar on sports rights on 17 Feb
LONDON: Sportcal.com has announced that it will hold a seminar on sports rights on 17 February. The theme is ‘Sports rights – what does the future hold?’ The event will be held at The Swedenborg Society, Swedenborg House, London.
The sports rights market is going through a turbulent period, with rights-holders seeking new ways of packaging and distributing their rights, in a bid to offset the slump in the value of rights in the wake of the US-led advertising recession and a widespread perception that some top rights, particularly those of soccer, had been overvalued.
Regulatory factors as well as economic ones are also influencing the rights market, with the European Commission’s recent ruling on the sale of the rights for Uefa’s Champions League setting a precedent that has already been ignored by some domestic leagues.
So what are the new factors influencing the value and make-up of sports rights packages, and how can rights-holders such as sports federations extract the maximum value of their rights in a fast-changing marketplace? ‘Sports Rights – What Does the Future Hold?’ presents a lineup of speakers that aims to tackle these issues, in an interactive forum giving delegates plenty of opportunity to participate in the debate.
Speakers at the seminar include FIFA marketing AG CEO Patrick K. Magyar, Sports Management consultant Jon Wigley, rbi Network consultant Richard Bunn.
Key issues that will be mulled over include:
– What effect has the changing commercial landscape already had on top sports rights, and what further developments are likely?
– How do broadcasters react to the perception that rights values are falling? Do they simply pay less, or does their involvement with the sports, they cover, give them a responsibility to continue to support them?
– How do sports federations and other rights-holders view the changes? Are there new opportunities, as well as new pitfalls?
– What are the recent legal and commercial developments affecting the sports rights market?
The deliberations at the above mentioned forum will be eagerly awaited by sports marketers all over the globe considering the level of transformation which the sports marketing arena has undergone in recent times.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
