ITV scores England away games deal

7:30pm Thursday 18th September 2008

ITV has struck a deal to broadcast highlights of England's remaining World Cup qualifying away games.

The deal comes after Setanta sold highlights of England's win over Croatia to ITV earlier this month following anger from football fans who missed the match.

Only 1.5 million viewers saw the 4-1 win live on Setanta's pay-TV channel, far fewer than watched the teams' last clash on the BBC.

Under 300,000 viewers tuned into the highlights on Setanta, which paid £5 million for the rights to show the England game.

Before striking a deal with ITV for the Croatia game, Setanta complained that other broadcasters were not willing to pay a fair price.

Gordon Brown weighed into the debate, saying it was "unfortunate" more football fans could not watch many of the qualifiers.

Setanta has the rights to all England's away World Cup 2010 qualifiers. ITV holds the rights to broadcast live coverage of all England's competitive home fixtures until 2012.

ITV News and Sport director Mark Sharman said: "We're pleased to have secured highlights of England's crucial World Cup qualifiers for free-to-air television. We know there is huge demand from fans to watch their qualification journey and we're delighted that every match will now be shown on ITV1."

Highlights of each away-game will be broadcast on ITV1 from 10.30pm on the evening of the match.

The remaining games are against Belarus on October 15, Kazakhstan on June 6 next year and Ukraine on October 10 2009. All of England's home World Cup 2010 qualifiers will be shown live on ITV1 - beginning with England v Kazakhstan on October 11.