Online sports video distributor Perform says it has signed up ITV (LSE: ITV) Sport, News International, Telegraph.co.uk, Guardian.co.uk, Daily Mail (LSE: DMGT), Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI), Evening Standard, Metro and Bauer to carry its e-Player, a video widget carrying highlights from a number of different competitions.

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The player is badged “Virgin Media (NSDQ: VMED) Sport” because it uses broadband highlights which the telco won last year for Premier League and Football League matches. But it also carries a number of other sports under the “Omnisport.tv” badge - the real name of Perform’s distribution initiative. Example on Mail Online.

It’s a Trojan horse on to publisher websites for Online Video Alliance, a new partnership that sees Virgin advertising subsidiary IDS sell ads in to Perform video content.

It’s also some much-needed off-portal action for Virgin Media’s football rights, which are a blessed but little-mentioned asset. The telco did team with Setanta to launch a sports website but the videos there didn’t work on my computer and we don’t hear much about this destination having been a wild success - perhaps an off-site syndication effort will help it score. Perform is locking the widget down, however - it can be included by partner publishers but there’s no embed code that can be used by the rest of us.