ESPN set to buy Orange Sport - report

News Video France 29 SEP 2010
ESPN set to buy Orange Sport - report
Disney sports broadcasting subsidiary ESPN will acquire France Telecom's Orange Sport TV channel at the end of October, reports news website Electron Libre without citing its sources. Under the reported deal, Orange will distribute the sports channel under the ESPN brand in France and internationally. The channel will be entirely managed by ESPN but Orange will continue to transmit French football league matches on mobile phones until 2012. France Telecom top executives have on several occasions said that the operator was looking for partners for its two TV channels, Orange Sport and Orange Cinema Series. French magazine Le Point previously reported that ESPN was in preliminary talks with France Telecom about Orange Sport. It wrote that ESPN did not want to compete directly with the sports offering of major pay-TV operator Canal Plus. France Telecom is still in talks with Canal Plus about a potential partnership for Orange's film and TV series premium channel. TF1's sports channel Eurosport told Le Point that it had no interest in Orange Sport because it saw it as a second-tier sports channel which is paying over the odds for content rights. Last year, ESPN bought the English football league rights of bankrupt Irish satellite broadcaster Setanta, which struggled against dominant pay-TV broadcaster Sky.

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Orange,  ESPN,  TF1,  France Telecom,  Canal Plus

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France

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xDSL, Wireless, M&A buyouts & divestments

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