BROADCASTING group ITV yesterday announced the sale of its outside broadcasting business 021 Television for £4.5m.

The sale, to broadcast equipment provider Gravity Media Group, is part of ITV's disposal programme of non-core assets, which has generated £281m for the group since its launch in July 2004.

Birmingham-based 021 has covered European Champions League football for ITV for seven years and will continue to do so on a contract-by- contract basis.

It has also filmed Premiership matches since the league's inception in 1993 and also covers snooker, boxing and music events.

Gravity Media Group operates in the UK and Australia and owns a range of broadcast facilitators such as Gearhouse Broadcast, which supplies camera equipment to television stations such as Sky Sports.

It said the takeover would help it operate in a market where increasingly "only large companies will be able to deliver acceptable returns".

The Moving Picture Company, a special effects business, which has worked on Hollywood blockbusters such as the Troy and the Harry Potter films, and the Australian media company Village Roadshow are among the other assets sold by ITV during the past 18 months.