MIT Sloan last week had a panel where many of the major sports executives discussed the current nature of media rights. Among the participants were Jon Miller of NBC Sports and John Skipper of ESPN. Soccer was one of the sports discussed. John Skipper, specifically, talked about losing the World Cup rights to Fox. http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=4732 In case you're interested, on their Youtube page they have videos about analytics on specific sports, as well as the business of sports in general.
For a research project on soccer, I need some data on the Asian Soccer, mainly the estimated nº of fans (Japan, Malaysia and Korea), amount of TV rights, merchandising values and other info. I would be very grateful for your help. You can send to nunoarpinto@gmail.com