ITV gets rights to show all of England’s football tournament qualifiers until 2022

ITV has retained the rights to show all of England’s tournament qualifiers until 2022.

The broadcaster will air all of England’s football tournament qualifiers for UEFA Euro 2020 and FIFA World Cup 2020, as well as any pre-tournament warm-up matches. However, that bit will be dependent on whether England make it into the tournaments!

This is nothing new, of course, as ITV are currently approaching the end of a deal ensuring they are the main international football broadcasters until 2018.

ITV Director of Sport Niall Sloane said: “England on ITV has become a central feature of our sports coverage and we’re delighted to be able to continue to bring to viewers free-to-air, all the action from the teams’ qualifying campaigns through to 2022.”

This means that competitive international football will remain – thank goodness – on free-to-view television.

Meanwhile, from 2018 all of England’s matches in a brand new UEFA Nations League will only be available on Sky Sports.

The UEFA Nations League is a brand new international tournament, launching in 2018, which will see 55 nations come together in a league format to compete for the chance to win a summer trophy in 2019. It has been devised as a way to limit meaningless international friendlies in football.

Sky Sports Managing Director, Barney Francis, said: “Showing England in competitive matches exclusively live for the first time in seven years is great news for our viewers with the Uefa Nations League putting the top nations against each other regularly.

“Added to the recent success of Wales and Northern Ireland in reaching major tournaments, there is even more reason to follow the Home Nations on Sky Sports.”

Sky will stream the first Soccer Saturday of the Premier League season for free

Sky Sports will be streaming the first Soccer Saturday of the new Premier League season for free on Facebook and YouTube.

Sky Sports’ Soccer Saturday will be simulcast from 3pm across Sky Sports News HQ, Sky Sports 1, Sky 1, PickTV, Skysports.com, Facebook and YouTube. This is the first time Sky Sports have streamed Soccer Saturday for fans on its social media platforms.

Soccer Saturday is Sky’s weekly guide to all the Saturday football matches across the leagues, and is presented by Jeff Stelling. Stelling is accompanied by a panel of experts and reporters such as Charlie Nicholas, Phil Thompson, and Chris Kamara.

There is no live coverage of games, but fans can watch live news and reactions from the day’s live games.

Stelling said: “Last season showed us anything can happen in the Premier League and the opening day is always full of surprises, so we’re delighted to open up our coverage of Soccer Saturday to even more people across our channels and online.

“There’s a terrific set of matches scheduled on the opening day of the season including champions Leicester City away to new boys Hull and Ronald Koeman’s first game in charge of Everton at home to Tottenham. Soccer Saturday will be the perfect way to follow every twist and turn.”

Fans can watch Wayne Rooney’s testimonial match – Man Utd v. Everton – live on Facebook

Wayne Rooney’s testimonial match will be the first ever game between Premier League teams to be streamed live on Facebook.

The match will be between Rooney’s current team Manchester United and his former team Everton, as the game celebrates his twelve years at United and raises money for four of Rooney’s favourite charities: NSPCC, Claire House children’s hospice, Alder Hey children’s hospital and the Manchester United Foundation.

The stream will be available for free to all 1.7 billion people who use the Facebook platform tonight (August 3, 2016), via both the Wayne Rooney and Manchester United official Facebook pages.

The game will take place at Old Trafford and kicks off at 8pm.

Rooney said: “I am delighted my testimonial game will be streamed globally, which will hopefully raise awareness and increase donations.”

New Manchester United signings Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Eric Bailly are expected to make their Old Trafford debuts during the match. The game will also be new manager Jose Mourinho’s first home game in charge of the club.

WATCH: David Beckham gets chased by dog in new Sky Sports advert

David Beckham has appeared in a new advertisement to promote the upcoming new football season on Sky Sports.

In the advert, Beckham goes on a morning jog and speeds through ten months of footballing drama and surprises, stopping to catch a game at a pub, have a kick-around with some kids, and watch a game through a family’s window before being chased away by their pooch.

Amongst the changing weather and scenery, one thing doesn’t change: the Premier League’s penchant for surprises. As Beckham runs, a commentator delightedly announces a series of imagined scenarios for next season – including a sixteen year old with two hat tricks in a week, Leicester’s Jamie Vardy breaking yet more records and Man United teenage sensation Rashford scoring the fifth goal in an action-packed game.

The advert is directed by Frederic Planchon and celebrates the unpredictability of the Premier League, after Leicester City’s shock win last season. It took more than 70 hours to film, the talents of 500 extras and 80 crew members plus the efforts of rollerblading camera specialist Myron Mance. The ad was filmed in East and West London, Derbyshire, Manchester/Stockport and at the Emirates Stadium.

Beckham said: “Anything can happen in the Premier League and this ad by Sky is a really fun way of showing that. Filming the ad was great and the finished piece is a really clever way of showing that you never know what might happen in football. I always enjoy working with Sky Sports and I’m proud to be associated with their football coverage.”

Sky Sports will broadcast 126 live games in the 2016/17 footballing season, including Friday evening games for the first time.

Sky’s first game of the 2016/17 season – Hull City vs Leicester City – will kick-off on Saturday, August 13 at 12.30pm (coverage from 11.30am).

BBC beat ITV in the Euro 2016 final ratings

The BBC has come out on top after going head-to-head with ITV broadcasting the Euro 2016 final between France and Portugal.

A shock win by Portugal in extra-time was watched by 10.2 million on the BBC, while only 1.9 million tuned in to watch the coverage on competitors ITV. The BBC’s coverage peaked with 13.6 million viewers.

This trend fits with independent research by TVGuide.co.uk suggesting that the BBC has won the battle of the ratings throughout Euro 2016, though this only examined games during the group stages of the Euro 2016 Championship.

TVGuide.co.uk found that more fans on averaged watched the BBC coverage (6.22 million) than the ITV coverage (5.55 million) or the Euro 2016 Group Stage evening games, when the England games were removed from the equation.

The final was the only time the two channels aired the same game during the tournament, though they have previously competed during finals of other championships. During the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the final between Germany and Argentina attracted 12.9 million viewers for BBC and 2.9 million on ITV.

Did BBC or ITV provide the best Euro 2016 coverage? The stats revealed

This Sunday marks the grand finale of Euro 2016 as Portugal take on hosts France for the right to call themselves Champions of Europe. It’s been a whole month of footballing highs (all British teams involved reached the last 16), unbelievable lows (only Wales got further) and Cristiano Ronaldo tantrums. We’re going to miss it all – even the heartbreak.

As per usual, the shared coverage between BBC and ITV got a lot of attention prior to the tournament. BBC had a lot in its favour – the Beeb’s lineup looked far superior. Gary Lineker sat in the host’s chair, with support in the form of Alan Shearer, Thierry Henry and Rio Ferdinand. ITV on the other hand, had Mark Pigatch, with help from Lee Dixon, Ian Wright and Glenn Hoddle. As fans would learn, the less said by Hoddle, the better. That’s without even mentioning the eternal ads vs no ads argument.

But ITV had the bigger games. Scoring three out of four of England’s matches during the tournament, BBC’s only offering for England fans was the 2pm win over Wales. The most-watched games of Euro 2016 in the UK were ITV’s England games. Advantage ITV.

We decided there was only one real way to determine which channel really won the Battle of the Euro 2016 Coverage, however, and that was to look at ratings. So, with the help of overnight ratings supplied by overnights.tv, we examined how many of you tuned into the Beeb versus ITV.

To make the game fairer, we first examined only Euro 2016 Group Stage games airing at 8pm on either BBC One or ITV 1 (games on BBC Four, ITV 4 or BBC Red Button were excluded). We also excluded the two England games, which we do not believe are accurate indicators of the public’s preference for either channel, given the huge public interest in England.

In total, the average number of people who watched a game was 5.85 million. This sample included five BBC games (Germany v Ukraine, Belgium v Italy, Portugal v Iceland, Portugal v Austria and France v Switzerland) and six ITV games (France v Romania, France v Albania, Germany v Poland, Spain vs Turkey, Spain v Croatia and Italy v Republic of Ireland). When we separate the games by channel, we learn that more fans on average watched the BBC coverage (6.22 million) than ITV coverage (5.55 million). However, if the England coverage is included, ITV coverage surges to an average of 6.66 million.

The pattern follows the same pattern for Euro 2016 Group Stage 5pm games. The BBC had seven 5pm games (Wales v Slovakia, Poland v Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland v Sweden, Czech Republic v Croatia, Iceland v Hungary, Northern Ireland v Germany and Hungary vs Portugal), which averaged 4.39 million viewers. ITV only broadcast three 5pm games (Austria v Hungary, Romania v Switzerland and Northern Ireland v Ukraine) and these went out to an average of 3.98 million.

We don’t have enough data to make the same observation about the 2pm games or the last 16 stages and later (yet), but these statistics so far would suggest that the BBC has supplied the superior coverage this Euro 2016 season.

Tables
Euro 2016 8pm games, excluding England v Russia and England v Slovakia

Euro 2016 5pm games