Thursday, 7th December 2006

HEADLINES OF THE DAY

WWE Feels Advertising Hit

World Wrestling Entertainment yesterday reported television rights fee income of US$21.8 million for the second quarter ending October 27, 2006, up 6.9% from $20.4 million in the same period last year. The increase was attributed mainly to fees from its new ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling) series. Television advertising revenues, however, showed a big drop from $7.7 million a year ago to $1.5 million in the latest quarter, reflecting WWE’s new deal with USA Network under which it no longer shares in domestic advertising sales. WWE reported overall revenue growth of 8.2% in the quarter to $96.2 million. Operating income slid 38.1 % to $11.7 million and net income slipped by 11.1% to $10.4 million.

WWE continues to monitor the situation in Indonesia, where its programming was pulled from the air by regulators last week. The Indonesian Broadcasting Commission ordered the ban amid allegations that a boy may have been killed by child ren imitating wrestling moves. “Despite the fact that authorities have said the death of a nine-year-old boy in Indonesia had nothing to do with WWE, local activists are still trying to fuel the fire by staging what is clearly seen as a contrived protest,” WWE stated on its website. Source: Sports Media, 6th December 2006

INFO DIGEST

Precision Sports Events at Doha 2006 - Did You Know?
* Archery: Based on the legend, a “Robin Hood” refers to one arrow splitting the shaft of another arrow already in the target.
* Bowling: In the 19th century, when only nine pins were used, some US States banned bowling because of widespread gambling. To get around the ban, it is believed an extra pin was added to create a new game, ‘tenpin bowling’ to which the ban would not apply!
* Chess: During World War II, the US Navy hired Reuben Fine, a world champion chess player, to calculate the probability of where enemy submarines might surface.
* Cue Sports: The main component of billiard cloth has remained unchanged for more than 400 years. Wool was used in the 1500s and remains the fabric of choice today.
* Fencing: At elite levels, the tip of the fencing weapon is the second fastest object in any event behind the marksman’s bullet.
* Golf: The longest recorded drive in a major tournament is 470.9m by Michael Hoke Austin in 1974. On the green, Jack Nicklaus and Nick Price share the longest putt of 33m recorded in 1964 and 1992 respectively.
* Shooting: While the targets in today’s ‘clay pigeon’ shotgun event are not live pigeons but disc-shaped clay plates, the real birds were actually used in the 1900 Olympics.
Source: Doha 2006 Gold Magazine

Info Box – 3G Handsets in China
* Although China will have its share of low-cost handsets, the Chinese government backing a switch to high-end 3G phones.
* China will have nearly 100 million 3G subscribers by 2009, according to a IDC study.
* This figure is now somewhat aggressive considering China's 3G rollouts have been delayed until 2007, but the country remains poised to move to higher-end phones now that most urban Chinese markets have been saturated
* Selling pricier phones and service is a requirement of continued growth in that country's cities.
* Although build-out to China's rural areas will be more expensive than for the densely populated cities, low-cost phones are expected to be the big sellers there as in much of the rest of Asia.
Source: Info IQ, 5th December 2006

FourFourTwo Football Rich List Top Ten
1) Roman Abramovich (Chelsea) £10.8 billion
2) Joe Lewis (Tottenham Hotspur) £2.1 billion
3) Dermot Desmond (Celtic) £1.25 billion
4) Malcolm Glazer (Manchester United) £1.05 billion
5) Trevor Hemmings (Charlton Athletic/Preston North End) £900 million
6) Sir Alan Sugar (Tottenham Hotspur) £790 million
7) Randy Lerner (Aston Villa) £789 million
8) David Murray (Rangers) £650 million
9) Simon Keswick & family (Cheltenham Town) £644 million
10) David Sullivan (Birmingham City) £595 million
Source: Football Insider, 6th December 2006

SPORTS SHORTS

* Neo Sports, a 24-hour cricket-centric TV channel from Nimbus Communications, plans to provide multilingual feeds for international and domestic matches soon. The channel, which has bagged telecasting rights of 72 per cent of all confirmed international cricketing events featuring India till March 2010, will come out with cricket commentary in regional languages such as Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. The channel has tied up with Star India to ensure speedy connectivity build up for the channel. Source: The Business Standard, 6th December 2006

* Maxis Communications, a Malaysian telecommunications company, has entered into an agreement with Sybase 365, a global player in mobile enterprise applications and messaging, to deliver MSN Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger to Maxis mobile subscribers. All postpaid and prepaid Maxis customers can now log onto http://www.msn.com.my/mobile to register their mobile phone numbers to their corresponding MSN Hotmail accounts. This will enable them to receive their Hotmail email via SMS on their mobile devices. Source: Digital Media Asia, 6th December 2006

* The Asian Games lost one of its star attractions Wednesday and gained a politically charged match-up in soccer. Hours after defending champion Paradorn Srichaphan said he would not be able to take part in the singles tennis competition due to a wrist injury, North Korea's soccer team beat Japan 2-1 in a final round-robin game. That set up a North Korea vs. South Korea quarter-final Saturday in a match that has political ramifications. Source: CBC Canada, 6th December 2006

* FOX Sports has renewed and extended its agreement with the Football Association Premier League for the live broadcast rights to the English Premier League in Australia until 2010. The agreement grants Premier Media Group, which produces the three Fox Sports channels and the Fox Sports News channel, the exclusive right to broadcast up to 370 matches per season on television and other media platforms including broadband and mobile devices. License fee was not disclosed. Source: Fox Sport Australia, 5th December 2006

* United States Figure Skating Association and ABC agreed to a contract in 1994 that brought the skating association a rights fee of $4.5 million a year. Two years later, ABC offered the association an extension of $8 million a year for another two years. And more recently, ABC agreed to an extension of rights that would pay U.S. figure skating $12 million annually for TV rights over its final eight years. The current ABC contract ending next spring, at least four years after the end of skating's era as a red-hot TV commodity. Source: Los Angeles Times, 6th December 2006

* The International Skating Union as its rights fee for events including the world championships and Grand Prix series dropped from a high of $22 million from ABC to $5 million from ESPN, the only network to make an offer. When that four-year deal expires after the 2008 season, the union could be out in the cold. Source: Los Angeles Times, 6th December 2006

* The imminent £450 million takeover of English Premier League club Liverpool could lead to the introduction of a wage cap with concerns that such takeovers will widen the gap between a handful of super-rich clubs and the rest. UEFA communications director William Gaillard said, “there is no doubt that the immediate threat in the short-term is a huge increase in the gap between the haves and the have nots.” Dubai International Capital is on the verge a deal to acquire Liverpool and is in exclusive talks with the club. Source: Sport Business, Football Insider, 6th December 2006

* NTL has walked away from its planned £5bn bid to take over ITV, after BSkyB's surprise swoop on the commercial broadcaster priced the cable operator out of the market. It is understood that the NTL board decided to abandon its takeover plans because it could not match the 135p share price set by BSkyB's sudden acquisition of a 17.9% stake in ITV at the end of November. By contrast, NTL only offered 105p a share in cash and a portion of NTL shares when it first approached the broadcaster at the start of November. BSkyB paid £940m for its slice of the terrestrial broadcaster, in a move that was widely seen as a blocking tactic to foil NTL's bid by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which owns 39% of BSkyB, headed by chief executive James Murdoch. Source: Brand Republic, Advanced Television, Worldscreen, 6th December 2006

* The first knockout stage draws for this season's UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup will be held at UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland on Friday 15 December. The draws will be broadcast live on uefa.com. The UEFA Champions League draw will see group winners paired off with runners-up from another group, with the latter playing the first legs at home. Teams from the same country cannot meet each other. Source: UEFA Site, 6th December 2006


MORE NEWS

The Philippines/New Media: Smart joins Asia's alliance of mobile operators

Philippines' mobile operator Smart Communications is the latest entrant into Asia's alliance of mobile operators that includes Far Eastone Telecommunications (Taiwan), Hutchison Essar (India), Hutchison Telecommunications (Hong Kong and Macau), Indosat (Indonesia), KT Freetel (South Korea), NTT DoCoMo (Japan) and Starhub (Singapore). The alliance, created in April 2006, was formed to enhance members' competitiveness in international roaming services in their own countries/regions and across the Asia Pacific. In addition to offering conventional roaming via GSM/GPRS and/or W-CDMA networks, alliance members are understood to have started working on roaming with HSDPA technology for high-speed downlinks with each other.
Besides roaming, most member operators have reportedly begun providing caller ID and short-code services to their customers as they roam into another member operator's network. This is understood to give business travellers easy access to their home operator's voice mail or customer-support centres. Alliance members are also currently working with multinational corporate clients to provide international data roaming packages and are considering the possibility of joint procurement to reduce costs.

In conjunction with the introduction of its newest member, the alliance has announced its official name and logo, as well as launched a new website. The name - Conexus Mobile Alliance - reportedly signifies the cooperative network of connections between people, places and ideas, one of the alliance's key missions. Source: Digital Media Asia, Digital Media Asia, 6th December 2006

Japan/New Media: FIFA Club World Cup Japan 2006 Online

Video highlights and extensive live coverage of the FIFA Club World Cup Japan 2006 will be available on FIFA.com. All matches will be covered live on the site: goals, cards, substitutions and additional statistics will be available in real time through FIFA.com’s exclusive ScoreCard service. Breaking news, post-match quotes and analysis, interviews and features will be produced direct from the venues. Two minute video summaries will be made available free of charge shortly after the final whistle of each game (except Japan and Spain, where there is a 24 hour delay).

A full Japanese language version of the will also be offered as well as the four official FIFA.com languages (English, Spanish, French and German). This Japanese version is available on www.FIFA.com/jp. “FIFA is happy to be able to showcase world-class club football on its official Website and to offer fans a comprehensive coverage of this major Tournament” said Jérôme Valcke, FIFA Director of Marketing & TV Division. “With the support of our friends at Dentsu, FIFA.com will feature video highlights of each match.” Source: Sport Business, Sports e-Media, EUFootball.biz, 6th December 2006

Elsewhere/New Media: LiveHive Looks to Drive TV Ratings With New Fantasy Game

Fantasy football has become a core product offering of nearly every major sports site. For those looking to differentiate their product offering a new fantasy game from LiveHive might be the answer. Unlike regular fantasy games that rely on pre-selecting players before the game and then waiting for results, LiveHive looks to make the fantasy gaming experience something that is in conjunction with watching the game. LiveHive lets players bet points on what the next play will be and “pays out” based on the odds that a specific play result will occur. Think a 75-yard TD is in the cards? Place a bet and soak up the big odds. Or play it conservative and predict a four-yard gain.

For TV networks the system could be a fantasy boon to ratings because it encourages fantasy players to be actively engaged in every single play—not just the end results. The system is a fully white-labeled solution that can be customized to the Web site provider. Fees can range from a flat fee to one involving revenue sharing of subscriptions. Source: Sports Video Group, 5th December 2006

Elsewhere/Business: Disney Has No Plans To Spin Off ESPN

While investment bank UBS values the ESPN unit at some $28 billion, Walt Disney's CFO said there are no plans to spin it off despite the potential payoff. Tom Staggs said that ESPN offers multiple synergies within the broad Disney portfolio. One of the more prominent examples--and a move that suggests how powerful the ESPN brand has become--is the recent decision to place sports broadcasts on ABC under the ESPN moniker. UBS says ESPN accounts for 40% of Disney's $70.7 billion market capitalization. Disney owns 80% of ESPN, with Hearst holding the remaining 20%.

Much of ESPN's value comes from its brand ID that allows it to establish beachheads on new platforms--although its recent ESPN Mobile venture failed--and that no doubt is key to Staggs' prediction that Disney as a whole can bring in $700 million in digital revenue in the next fiscal year, up from $500 million this year. A third of those revenues are from ad dollars, Staggs said. Source: Media Post, 6th December 2006

Elsewhere/Business: Ad Spend Check: TV Up, Online a Rising Star, Print Worrying

Group M’s forecast for 2007 shows the market is healthy with this neck of the woods looking particularly promising. Global ad spend showed steady growth of +5.3% in 2006, however Asia Pacific’s forecasted growth for 2006 is likely to outperform the trend with +8% growth predicted. Other trends highlighted in Group M’s, This Year Next Year report, delivered at a breakfast briefing in New York yesterday, included that China has now outstripped the US as the biggest contributor to growth and that marketing services like direct marketing PR, market research and sponsorship are growing faster than mainstream at +6.2% (2006).

There was bad news for print players as global print spending is set to drop dramatically with newspapers forecast to grow just +5% in 2006 after experiencing +14% growth in 2005, while magazines are expected to only grow +4% for 2006 compared to +15% last year. Not surprisingly internet ad spending was a stellar performer experiencing +22% growth in 2005 and a forecasted +27% in 2006. However TV also showed a healthy growth pattern with spend rising +38% in 2005 and +49% for 2006. Source: Marketing Magazine Singapore, 6th December 2006

Elsewhere/General: Easier Cup route for Oceania

FIFA has decided to allow the Oceania Nations Cup champions to qualify for the 2010 World Cup through the final group stage in Asia. Australia's decision to join the Asian Football Confederation was supposed to make its path to the World Cup easier, but New Zealand now appears to have just a good a chance of making it to South Africa after the revamped qualification for the OFC champions. The All Whites will have to qualify from a four-team tournament featuring the top-three sides from the 2007 South Pacific Games in Samoa.

The winner of that tournament, most likely New Zealand, will then be granted access to the final group qualification stage of the AFC, which now receives five qualification spots in the 32-team finals as opposed to the 4.5 it received for Germany 2006. Oceania's qualification into the Asian group stage was something Australia had campaigned for after the OFC's direct qualification was scrapped following protests from the strong South American and European confederations.

Football Federation Australia moved to the Asian Football Confederation early in 2006 citing greater opportunities for both club and national sides to participate in world class competitions. The AFC had four teams at Germany 2006, only for all of them to fail to progress to the second round. Australia, playing as an OFC team, was defeated in the second-round by eventual champion Italy.

The other changes see the CONCACAF Federation (North and Central America) and the CONMEBOL Federation (South America), share eight places. The fourth placed CONCACAF side likely to play the fifth-placed CONMEBOL team for a spot in South Africa in what appears a much-more common sense approach, given the distance between the two. Source: Sportal, 7th December 2006