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.