The Bigs

This is a list of "Big x" corporations in their respective industries:

ESPN's coverage of the Olympics in the U.S. sans video rights — Poynter

Kelly McBride critiqued ESPN's coverage of the London 2012 Olympics for the Poynter Institute. ESPN did not have the rights to broadcast the Olympics. That meant its flagship newscast SportsCenter faced many challenges when reporting the games, especially not being able to show video of events until the day after they occurred.

Some pertinent lines describing NBC's control over Olympic video content used by other broadcasters:

"The rights to Olympic video are restricted, more so than almost any other sporting event. Of the hours and hours of amazing video every day, NBC released only the bare-bones highlights. Much of that video was for TV only. No amount of money can change this, said Mike Leber, ESPN senior coordinating producer for news coverage. NBC had the American rights to the Olympics and dictated what video was available to other broadcasters.

NBC also dictated when the video was available and for how long. Video wasn't available until 3 a.m. or later, when NBC's Olympics programming was off the air on the West Coast, and there were no digital highlights available for the Web."

La Liga television rights 2012-15

After a fall-out that threatened to delay the start of the 2012-13 season, an agreement on dividing domestic television rights for La Liga was announced on 17 August, just a day before the first round of matches.

Pay television rights are shared between Canal Plus (owned by Prisa S.A.) and Mediapro (Imagina) on the satellite and digital terrestrial platforms respectively. Mediapro also has rights to one free-to-air match per week.

The following is the agreement between the two broadcasters from 2012-13 through to the 2014-15 season:

Canal+ 1, Canal+ Liga (satellite pay TV)
Canal+ 1 will broadcast one exclusive match per week of its choice. An additional eight non-exclusive matches will be screened on Canal+ Liga.

Gol T (digital terrestrial pay TV)
Gol T will air eight matches per week including one game featuring Real Madrid or Barcelona. The eight matches will overlap with Canal+ Liga. Gol T will also broadcast one El Clásico per season.

LaSexta (free-to-air)
The free-to-air channel will broadcast one match per week, preferably on Mondays.

UEFA Super Cup 2012

Stade Louis II. (Sportsfile)

UEFA Champions League winners Chelsea will face Europa League champions Atlético Madrid in the UEFA Super Cup on 31 August 2012 (20:45 CEST). The Super Cup is the annual clash between the winners of the Champions League and Europa League and the curtain raiser to the new season of European club competition.

This year's Super Cup will the last to be held annually at the Stade Louis II in Monaco. While the competition has been in existence since 1972, it only became a one-off game played at a neutral venue in 1998. From then, it has always been held in Monaco. From 2013, it will be held in different stadia across Europe, much like the Champions League and Europa League finals, albeit at smaller ones in smaller cities.

UEFA has awarded the 2013 edition to the Eden Arena in Prague (capacity 21,000), 2014 to the Cardiff City Stadium (26,000), and 2015 to the Mikheil Meskhi Stadium in Tbilisi (27,000). All of them are larger than Louis II (18,000).

From 2014, the Super Cup will also be moved forward to mid-August.

In addition to the Super Cup, Monaco is also home to a host of other events surrounding the match, including the Champions League group stage draw and the UEFA Best Player in Europe Award ceremony, collectively known as the "European Club Season Kick-Off". So any city where the Super Cup is held in the future may have additional hosting duties as well.

Olympics on TV so far..

The London 2012 opening ceremony drew big audience numbers in the U.S., UK and Canada. It is the most watched Summer Olympic opening ceremony ever in the U.S. (with an average of 41.9 million viewers) and Canada (6.4m), and the most watched in the UK (22.4m) since at least 1992.

Due to time zone similarity, most European countries should have large audience figures as well.

On the other side of the world, 2.41m viewers watched the ceremony (which began at 5am) in Australia. That's lower than the viewing figures for Beijing, but that was aired at a much more convenient time for Australians.

Elsewhere, more and more evidence is showing that NBC is seriously full of #$%*. First, it edited out a performance during the ceremony honoring deceased loved ones of spectators, explaining that its broadcast was "tailored for the U.S. television audience." Next, it refused to stream the 400 m individual medley final featuring Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte online, delaying its broadcast until primetime to secure maximum TV viewers.

London 2012 opening ceremony TV preview

Where to watch the London 2012 opening ceremony.

The opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics is less than 12 hours away. The ceremony itself, named "Isles of Wonder," is expected to be viewed by a billion people around the world. Almost everyone with a television or internet connection across the globe will be witnessing it live, except for those in the United States. 

That's because broadcaster NBC will broadcast it on tape delay for primetime. While broadcasters around the world aim to bring the Olympic experience to their viewers live, NBC cares about securing the largest possible audience at 7:30 ET/PT to ... promote its fall programming lineup.

Penn State sanctions by NCAA

NCAA president Mark Emmert handing out the sanctions. (Getty Images)

The NCAA on July 24 punished the Penn State football program with a $60 million fine, a four-year ban from participating in postseason bowl games and the erasing of 112 wins by the team from 1998 to 2011. That also means Joe Paterno's all-time record of 409 wins no longer stands.