Monday, 23rd July 2007

RESULTS

Source: AVP Official, 23rd Jul 2007
Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser would not relinquish their perfect record against Sean Rosenthal and Jake Gibb in the 2007 AVP Crocs season by taking Sunday's men’s match at Long Beach, 21-16, 19-21, 15-9. In the women’s event, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh raced to their ninth title in nine straight final appearances this season with a 21-10, 21-14 victory over Rachel Wacholder and Tyra Turner.

Source: Yahoo! Eurosport, 23rd Jul 2007
James Toseland was denied a double victory at Brno when Max Biaggi claimed a commanding win in the second World Superbike Championship race of the day in the Czech Republic. The 35-year-old Italian made his decisive move on Noriyuki Haga for the lead on lap 13 of 19 and pulled away to claim his second win of the season and his first since the season-opener in Qatar.


THIS WEEK

Sun, 15th Jul 2007
DTM 2007: Race Day – Zandvoort, The Netherlands
BTCC 2007: Race Day – Snetterton, UK


DID YOU KNOW…?

The closest split-second difference in an F1 race finish for first and second place was recorded in 1999 when Michael Schumacher zipped past the finish line ahead of Ferrari teammate, Mika Salo at 266km/h and the video camera recorded a lead of 0.001 seconds. This was equivalent to 7.4cm between the two Ferraris. Source: The Sun MY, 23rd Jul 2007


SPORTS SHORTS

* Ten Sports has launched a sports news show called 'Bajaj Pulsar DTS Sportsnight' in partnership with Bajaj. The show starts from 23 July at 10 pm. Presented by Anand Narasimhan, the show will also include live reporting of international sports events that are broadcast on Ten Sports bringing viewers news, action, opinion and analysis from the various sporting occasions. The show will focus on cricket stories and will also connect with top level international sports shown on the channel including the US Open tennis, Champions League football and World Hockey events. Source: Indian Television, 20th Jul 2007

* China's CCTV5 will become a 24-hour Olympics channel from January 1st, 2008, China Central Television President, Zhao Huayong has said. Zhao said preparation for promotion, technical upgrades, logistics, multimedia and marketing has almost finished for the CCTV5 Olympic reporting group. The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games will open in August 8th and close on August 24th. During the 17 days of competition, 2500 hours of sport programmes will air, 1000 hours of broadcasting more than the 2004 Athens Olympics. Other CCTV channels and digital TV channels will cooperate with CCTV5 to provide a colourful sport broadcast to the world. Source: Xinhua English, 19th Jul 2007

* India’s Zee TV is launching a streamed mobile content portal on state-owned provider BSNL’s platform, called ISEE. ISEE has been developed by Digital Media Convergence Ltd (DMCL), part of the Essel Group, which also backs Zee. It will launch first in northern parts of India before rolling out nationwide before the end of the year, on existing 2G and 2.5G networks. For Rs150 a month, subscribers will have unlimited access to ISEE which will offer news and sport as well as Zee’s soap programmes. Source: Rapid TV News, 20th Jul 2007

* Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan are the world leaders in connecting homes via fibre optics, according to a global ranking of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) market penetration. The ranking, issued jointly by the FTTH councils of Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America, is the first official ranking of FTTH deployments in the world's economies found that 21.2% of homes in Hong Kong are wired with FTTH, followed by South Korea at 19.6% and Japan at 16.3%. Taiwan and China are also among the top 11 economies, with penetration rates of between 1.4 and 1%. Source: Ken Radio, 20th Jul 2007

* South African public broadcaster, SABC, has formally taken legal action to freeze a television rights deal between pay-television operator Supersport and the Premier Soccer League. SuperSport recently claimed the live rights to the PSL for the next five seasons in a deal worth an estimated R1.6 billion ($233 million) and pledged to offer a package of games to free-to-air broadcasters. SABC, which previously held the rights, has challenged the agreement signed by the PSL and claims that it had rights which should have allowed it to match any deal offered to a rival broadcaster. Source: Sportcal, 20th Jul 2007

* German commercial broadcaster Sat.1 acquired rights for the remainder of this year's Tour de France after German public broadcasters dropped the coverage in response to the news that T-Mobile rider, Patrik Sinkewitz had failed a June drugs test. ARD and ZDF dropped the coverage and ZDF is reported to have said it may seek compensation for lost income that resulted in the suspension of broadcast. “We bought the rights to a clean sports event,” ZDF managing editor Nikolas Bender told the Berliner Zeitung. “We will seek out talks with the Tour organizer Amaury Sports Organisation.” Source: Sport Business, 20th Jul 2007

* New York sports and media company, SCP Worldwide, has entered partnership with Real Madrid to promote the club in the USA. The multiyear deal sees SCP acquire broadcasting rights to Real Madrid content and manage tours in the USA. SCP owns US Major League Soccer franchise Real Salt Lake and NHL ice hockey’s St. Louis Blues but a bid for cable and satellite soccer network GolTV fell through in June. SCP had previously agreed a deal to acquire an 80% stake in GolTV for $200 million. Source: Sportcal, 20th Jul 2007

* The International Mind Sports Association, in collaboration with the international federations for bridge, draughts, chess, Chinese chess and Go is to organise the first Mind Sports Games in Beijing in October next year, on the site of the Olympic Games. The games are being organised under the auspices of the General Association of International Sports Federations. The IMSA, which plans to establish the games as a quadrennial event. Source: Sportcal, 20th Jul 2007

* Although television continues to dominate — as distribution platform for sports content and as a medium for marketers who attach their brands to sports properties — online and mobile platforms are quickly evolving and becoming an important part of the media and marketing mix. eMarketer estimates that US advertising spending at sports Web sites will grow from $407 million in 2006 to reach $1.1 billion in 2011. As a result, the Internet's share for sports websites will double to 10% by 2011, up from 4.9% in 2006. According to a January 2007 Adweek poll, sports ranked second — behind celebrities — as the best subject matter for an ad-supported Web site. Source: Ken Radio, 20th Jul 2007


MORE NEWS

Singapore/Broadcaster: New Pay-TV Service Launches

Singapore Telecommunications has launched mio TV, a new pay-TV service featuring 24 linear channels, including new offerings from VOOM and the BBC, and video on demand content such as a host of feature films from Sony Pictures Television International. “The next generation of television watching has arrived,” said Allen Lew, the Singapore CEO at SingTel. “Customers have been calling for choice and flexibility in the pay-TV market and now they have it.”

The platform, which is taking on established cable player StarHub, will feature on-demand access to blockbuster movies from major Hollywood movie studios including Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox and Disney. Customers can search for content by genre, by title or by actor’s name. SingTel has inked an output deal with Sony Pictures Television International that brings viewers feature films at the same time as the DVD release.

In terms of HD content, the platform offers Equator HD, a documentary channel; SLING HD, a teen oriented co-venture of VOOM HD and Singaporean company Mega Media, with content on computer games, virtual reality and extreme sports; WorldSport HD, a video-on-demand service featuring sports documentaries and select arena sporting events; and VOOM HD, with a broad slate of original programming of adventure travel, fashion, luxury lifestyle, art and music.

In addition to MediaCorp's suite of free-to-air channels (Channels 5, 8, U, Channel Newsasia, Suria and Central), its HD5 will also be available on mio TV. This will be the first free-to-air HD channel in Singapore. Also available will be the Mei Ah TV channel, Singapore’s first Cantonese movie channel. Selected titles will premiere simultaneously on mio TV and on Hong Kong cinema screens. Other channel offerings include Sony Entertainment Television targeting women; Luli for toddlers, KBS World from Korea, India’s Zee Channel and ETTV Asia News from Taiwan.

The platform offers an a la carte price plan as opposed to basic tier subscription packages. Channels are priced at between S$4.28 and S$12.85 per month. Mio TV will also offer customers a personal video recorder, and the mio TV website allows subscribers to program their recordings when they are not at home. An upcoming service will enable them to do it via their mobile phones. Source: Worldscreen, Rapid TV News, Advanced Television, 20th Jul 2007

Elsewhere/General: Beckham Already Having Commercial Impact on US Soccer

While the media speculated as to whether David Beckham will play his first game for the LA Galaxy in last Saturday’s friendly against Chelsea at the Home Depot Centre, one thing is certain: Beckham is already generating significant revenue for his employers.

Since the announcement of his signing in January, the Galaxy and Major League Soccer (MLS) have been focused on selling Beckham to sponsors and fans. The effort has been an unqualified success. In addition to major shirt sponsor Herbalife ($20 million over five years), it has been reported that the Galaxy have signed other deals totaling $6 million over the past six months.

Ticket revenue has also soared with the Galaxy having increased ticket revenue by an estimated $4 million compared to last year. Friendly matches this year – which have the potential of earning the team $1 million per game – have already been scheduled against two second division professional teams in the US and Canada (Minnesota and Vancouver) and one in Sydney. The Galaxy is planning a 2008 pre-season tour of Asia and friendly matches in the UK.

US media outlets have reported that the Galaxy received orders for 250,000 Beckham shirts before his unveiling last Friday and that first day Beckham Galaxy sales exceeded those for the players first day with Real Madrid. Beckham, however, is clearly not the only soccer attraction in MLS: Mexican star Cuauhtemoc Blanco generated a larger crowd than Beckham for his MLS unveiling in April and has likewise increased ticket sales and commercial revenue for the Chicago Fire. Source: Sport Business, 20th Jul 2007


ARTICLES, COMMENTS & OPINIONS

Analysis: Battling the pirates in Asia's pay-TV industry
By UPI Correspondent, Shailesh Palekar for UPI Asia Online, 20th Jul 2007

What would it take to battle piracy raging in Asia's billion-dollar pay-TV market -- sophisticated technology that protects transmission of content or plain simple marketing strategies that create affordable subscription packages? Perhaps both could be equally effective, but much would depend on the will to create a fully licensed competitive marketplace that supports digital infrastructure and adheres to international standards that protect intellectual property rights for all kinds of broadcasts.

Hong Kong's Apliu Street flea market was once the hotbed for pirates who openly sold illegal set-top boxes, or STBs, and cards configured to steal cable TV signals. These boxes could generate over 90 premium content channels ranging from sports to news, history to entertainment, and soft porn to the latest Hollywood releases, all for a one-time fee of about US$100, for an infinite length of viewing time.

However, Internet protocol technologies adopted by PCCW, Hong Kong's premier telecommunications provider for its NOW broadband pay-TV service, virtually ended the reign of these illegally "cloned" STBs. In the process, it transited from traditional analog cable to digital TV by using the digital rights management technology, which protects the interests of owners of content and services, such as copyright owners. This kind of technology stipulates that authorized recipients or users must acquire a license in order to consume the protected material like files, music or movies as per the rights or business rules set by the content owner.

The introduction of cheap and flexible channel pricing also attracted subscribers who were willing to pay only for those channels that they wanted instead of higher prices for a bouquet of channels -- many of which were of little of no interest to them.

NOW TV also utilizes a combination of security techniques like network-based conditional access, end-to-end encryption and analog copyright protection in the STB after the signal has been encrypted. The result is that no one seems to be selling the illegal STB's on Apliu Street now -- simply because the pirates have not been able to crack the new technologies.

In 2005, in order to protect intellectual property, the Philippine's National Bureau of Investigation along with the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia, or CASBAA, raided cable companies in Mindanao and Manila. They seized equipment used for illegal distribution of unauthorized pay-TV signals related to various news and entertainment channels such as CNN, Cartoon Network, Discovery, ESPN, HBO and MTV. They found that these cable operators were not paying the original content providers, but obtaining the signals illegally. However, raids such as these only produce short-term results while pirates re-group and start operations elsewhere.

India's piracy woes are rather unique; resolving them would require a complete reformation and restructuring of its national cable TV industry. Here, revenue losses occur in its unique last-mile gray market wherein subscriber fees are collected in cash on the consumer's doorstep. Stealing legitimate pay-TV cables and illegally hooking them into various households for a paltry sum is a neat trick that nets thousand of dollars for pirates as much as it benefits consumers who are unable to afford the cost of genuine cables and hefty channel subscriptions.

Like Hong Kong, the number of pirated pay-TV subscriptions has remained significantly low in Singapore due to its ongoing digitization of cable networks, and has resulted in a 15.8 percent decline in pay-TV piracy costs, making it, along with Hong Kong, a classic example of how to tackle pay-TV piracy.

However, other Asian regions have been slow in adopting similar measures. Despite the growth of legitimate subscribers in Vietnam, piracy there has increased. According to CASBAA, it has 2.5 million unauthorized pay-TV subscribers to cable, satellite, and other digital terrestrial systems, compared to a legitimate subscriber base of only 1 million. Thailand also suffers from rising costs of pay-TV piracy, comprising an alarming 1.27 million unauthorized connections, while Macau has ten pirated connections for every single legal subscriber.

A study conducted by CASBAA in 2006 estimated that the cost of pay-TV piracy in the region had increased from US$1.06 billion in 2005 to US$1.13 billion in 2006. The increase has been consistent for four consecutive years; the number of illegal subscriptions across Asia Pacific increased by 20 percent in 2006 to 5.2 million connections. The report also highlights the fact that pay-TV piracy cost the region's governments estimated tax revenue losses of US$158 million.

Although Asian states view the tax revenue losses as having important repercussions, growing piracy suggests that enforcement of tough measures has not been a high priority. The costs of replacing old equipment, investing in new technologies, and cutting down the recurring transponder and satellite costs for acquiring broadcast signals has been an expensive and slow process.

One can also argue that CASBAA's statistics are based on the assumption that people who acquire pirated content, either by purchasing illegal STBs or through unauthorized operators signals, would have paid for the same content legitimately if piracy didn't exist. If this is untrue then the loss of revenue does not paint a bleak picture that necessitates governments to take punitive action. Estimating the real revenue loss is tough, as it would only factor in people who buy pirated subscriptions and illegal STBs, but would be legitimate subscribers if piracy were to be rooted out.

Industry experts estimate that the future demand for the Asia-Pacific pay-TV market would come from China and India with their huge consumer bases despite their current relatively low pay-TV and digital penetration. However, keeping pirates at bay by plugging the system that is constantly under attack remains a daunting task in most Asian regions. Legitimate and affordable pay-TV, and good marketing strategies, still fall short of consumer expectations of watching channels at little or no cost.