A whole host of publishers have employed the services of sports video provider Perform, a company specialising in “monetising sports and entertainment rights in digital media”.
Paid Content reports that Guardian.co.uk, News International, Associated Newspapers, Trinity Mirror, Telegraph Media Group, Bauer and ITV Sport have all signed up to carry its e-player to show sports highlights.
The embedded video widget will show clips from various competitions, branded as Virgin Media thanks to the telecoms company’s sports rights, but it also offers a produced sports bulletin.
While publishers seek new ways to show as much footy as possible, sports rights has emerged as a real battleground in recent years where publishers, sports governing bodies and rights holders fight for control of lucrative live coverage and highlights.
The European Union even tabled legislation designed to strengthen governing bodies and clubs’ control over coverage and image rights.
Journalists have complained several times of attempts to control their coverage – there was a widely-observed boycott of last year’s Rugby World Cup over copyright and a limit on the amount of live coverage, while the the International Cricket Council once threatened to ban over-by-over live text coverage, now popular with readers of the BBC and Guardian.co.uk.
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