Virgin Media in talks to sponsor 'BB8'

Virgin Media is reportedly in secret talks with Channel 4 to sponsor this year's Big Brother.

According to The Guardian, the deal would mean Virgin Media could gain exclusive access to video-on-demand and mobile phone content which could boost its "four-play" cable TV, broadband, mobile phone and telephone landline offering.

Last month, Carphone Warehouse dropped its sponsorship of the show following the alleged racism row over January's Celebrity Big Brother. Earlier this week, mobile operator Orange said it decided against sponsoring the reality show after staff rejected the idea.

The Big Brother sponsorship package includes branding and advertising opportunities across TV, video-on-demand, online, radio and mobile.

This morning, Virgin Media has announced it is to sponsor the Yamaha British Superbike team for 2007. The six-figure deal continues a seven year relationship with Virgin Mobile and Yamaha. The Virgin Mobile Cup will also be renamed the Virgin Media Cup.

James Kydd, managing director of marketing at Virgin Media, said: "The sponsorship gives us the opportunity to reach a very large and passionate audience. For us the fans and not the size of our logos are the important thing and we will build our activity around them, starting by offering unique, specialist superbike content on our portal."

Virgin will also continue to produce the successful ad funded TV show, Natural Born Racers, which will air on Five towards the end of the year.