A collapsed deal between Fox Sports and media rights agency MP & Silva has fuelled speculation that a new 24 Sport Pay TV channel could launch in Australia in 2014.

As previously reported on this website, On the 27th of September Fox Sports announced it had signed a two-year deal with MP & Silva to broadcast Italian Serie A Football within Australia.

However the deal fell through only three days later with MP & Silvia revoking the broadcast rights.

A senior industry executive working in the Oceania region now says that he believes the Serie A rights could have been taken back by MP & Silva with a view to a possible launch of a new Australian Pay Television sports service under the banner of BeIN Sport, the pay-television broadcaster owned by Qatar-based Al Jazeera.

MP & Silva recently sealed a partnership with BeIN Sport to launch a series of branded channels in southeast Asia. Services have already been rolled out in Indonesia and the Philippines, and BeIN Sport channels will soon launch in Hong Kong, Thailand and Taiwan. BeIN Sport also has a channel in the US and markets itself as “America’s Home of Soccer”

The Australian market was poised for the launch of a BeIN Sport-branded service as early as 2011. An Australian trademark for BeIN Sport was registered in May of 2012. Recent reports suggest a service could be up and running in early 2014.

Under a deal that Foxtel signed with the ACCC in 2002, Foxtel would be forced to carry BeIN Sport on its network. A similar situation occurred when Setanta Sports launched in Australia in 2007.

Additional Info - Sportcal