Kia ora, Talofa lava, Ma’lelei, Bula, Aloha and Welcome to Season 11 Episode 10 of Breakfast Bites, by TEIVOVOdigital.com – a wrap of Pasifika people’s sports news, on Saturday morning 12 October 2024.
 
Happy Birthday Taina Hazelman!
 
Coming to you with tons of hanisi from the 180th meridian, in the middle of the Blue continent, where it is mostly cloudy and 22 degrees Celsius again at 5am this morning.
 
And in Rugby Union: A new profit share model which includes players, will be implemented for next summer’s British & Irish Lions tour of Australia.
 
The new financial setup will see tour profits shared with players for the first time, and will introduce increased collaboration between them and the Lions organisation, particularly around scheduling and preparation. 

Ben Calveley, British & Irish Lions CEO, said: “We know that players love playing for the Lions, and this landmark agreement highlights how they are at the centre of our thinking. This agreement crucially reflects the value we place on our players.”

Backed by a record 25 commercial deals, the Lions reportedly made an £8.2m profit on their tour of South Africa in 2021.

In Rugby League: The NRL has emailed all 17 Clubs for feedback regarding potential changes to the play-the-ball, the Bunker, judicial process and concussion protocols ahead of the 2025 season.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports the NRL is trying to address a number of contentious issues with Clubs, seeking suggestions on how it can improve on-field officiating.

In the NFL: Heading into Week 6, NFL broadcasts are averaging 17.5 million viewers per game, up 1% from 2023 and the highest viewership since 2015. 

The bad news is that, after the NFL’s best September in nine years, most broadcast windows in Week 5 had smaller TV audiences than they did in 2023, according to Sports Media Watch.

A Cowboys-Steelers matchup would normally draw huge TV numbers, but a 90-minute weather delay to kickoff meant the 20–17 Dallas victory wasn’t over until nearly 1am Eastern Time.

As a result, the 20.3 million people who stayed tuned to NBC was the lowest Sunday Night Football audience of the season, down 23% from last year.

The ESPN Monday Night Football audience of 15.91 million for Kansas City’s 26–13 win over the Saints was down from 17.38 million viewers in Week 5 last year.

Thankfully, Thursday Night Football is averaging 14.17 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video, up 5% from the 2023 season. 

In Boxing: The only reason the Artur Beterbiev-Dmitry Bivol fight is going down this weekend, is because of Turki Alalshikh the Chairman of Saudi Arabia's General Entertainment Authority.

The politics and unusual broadcast arrangements illustrate just how tricky this deal was to consummate without Alalshikh's involvement.

Beterbiev is promoted by Top Rank, which has an exclusive media rights deal with ESPN, so the main event will be streamed on ESPN+ and the rest of the undercard will be streamed on DAZN, which has a partnership with Bivol's promoter, Matchroom.

Without someone like Alalshikh to broker the deal and stage the fight, promoters Bob Arum and Eddie Hearn, talked on and off over the years but weren't able to make the fight happen.
 
Little wonder then that last month, Alalshikh was named ESPN's most-influential figure in combat sports.
 
Finally, in Football: Jurgen Klopp is officially returning to football, in January 2025 in a new role as global head of soccer at Red Bull.
 
Red Bull owns RB Leipzig in Germany’s Bundesliga, Austrian side Red Bull Salzburg and Major League Soccer side New York Red Bulls, as well as Brazilian side Red Bull Bragantino.

JKlopp will advise teams on playing philosophy, transfer strategy and coaching development.

And that’s a wrap peeps!

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Mahalo and Ka kite; for TEIVOVOdigital.com, I’m Culden Kamea tanking you all too mas for all your love and support.
 
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