Thursday, 27th September 2007

SPORTS SHORTS

* Thailand’s Shin Satellite is reportedly gearing up to launch direct-to-home satellite TV platforms in southeast and south Asia, if talks with a “few” governments prove fruitful. A report in the Bangkok Post said that Shin Sat, a subsidiary of Shin Corp, would need to invest between US$5 million and US$10 million in satellite uplink and studio facilities if the DTH platforms went ahead. An un-named Shin Sat executive said that the company was expecting to enter into two partnerships with governments “by early next year”. Source: Rapid TV News, Asia Media, 26th Sep 2007

* India has been chosen to host golf’s Johnnie Walker Classic in 2008. The event, which is co-sanctioned by the European, Asian and Australasian Tours, will take place at the DLF Golf and Country Club near New Delhi from February 28 to March 2. The Johnnie Walker Classic has been staged in seven countries since its launch in 1990. South Africa’s Anton Haig won this year’s tournament held in Phuket, Thailand. Golf is becoming an increasingly popular sport in India and this is reflected in the European Tour’s decision to launch the $2.5-million Indian Masters in New Delhi in early February. Source: Sportcal, 26th Sep 2007

* German Bundesliga is ‘heading towards a pay-tv structure’ but seeking to broadcast free-to-air highlights before 8pm. Christian Seifert, DFL's chief executive, said that a timeslot before 8pm on Saturday nights for free-to-air highlights was ‘essential’. The league is set to issue its tender for rights at the end of this year for the 2009-10 season onwards. Sportschau, the Bundesliga highlights programme broadcast by ARD, the public-service broadcaster, is presently shown at 6.30pm, just over an hour after the afternoon matches conclude. The league generates around €420 million ($593.2 million) a year in broadcast revenue. Source: Sportcal, 26th Sep 2007


MORE NEWS

India/Broadcaster: NDTV to launch more channels

News and lifestyle channel broadcaster New Delhi Television (NDTV) is looking at launching more television channels, both domestically and internationally. Speaking at the launch of MetroNation, NDTV’s fifth channel in the country, Prannoy Roy, chairman, said, “By this year, or financial year end, there will be more channels from NDTV. The channel is targeted at the five-million Delhi citizens that read English language newspapers. NDTV operates five channels within the country, including NDTV 24x7, NDTV India, NDTV Profit, NDTV Good Times and NDTV MetroNation. It has launched its channels in Indonesia, Malaysia and Dubai, through collaborations.

The broadcaster was looking to increase its presence in news-cum-entertainment channels across emerging markets such as North Africa, West Asia and south east Asia, Roy added. NDTV’s Bahasa Indonesia language channel in Indonesia, launched in 2006 in a joint venture with Astro All Asia, has broken even and even started making money. It launched NDTV Arabia earlier this month with a focus on Dubai and UAE. It has also launched a Bahasa Malaysia language channel in Malaysia, in partnership with Astro All Asia. Within India, the company launched its lifestyle channel NDTV Good Times, which has a branding tie-up with UB Group’s Kingfisher.

NDTV will launch city channels focused on Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai, under the brand NDTV MetroNation, similar to the channel launched in New Delhi, Chief Executive K V L Narayan Rao said. More than 100 new TV channels are scheduled to be launched in India, the world’s third-largest cable TV market, over the next 12 months. Source: The Business Standard, 26th Sep 2007

Elsewhere/Business: Kirch Back in Business

Leo Kirch, the German entrepreneur whose media empire collapsed in 2002, has made a dramatic comeback by acquiring an 11.5-per-cent stake in EM.Sport Media, the German media company, in a strategic move that also alters the ownership of the Team Marketing sports agency. Kirch, now aged 80, has won shares in EM.Sport Media by selling the company up to 36.4 per cent of his holding in Highlight Communications, the media group that owns 80 per cent of Team Marketing, the agency responsible for distributing the media rights of European soccer’s top-tier Uefa Champions League. Kirch's shares in Highlight, held through a private bank in Frankfurt, have only now been officially revealed.

The strategic partnership between EM.Sport Media, the owner of the German sports channel DSF, and Highlight Communications could pave the way for a merger of the two to create a broadcasting group specialising in sports rights, among other areas. The prospects of a Kirch-led group returning to the forefront of the German sports rights market have been improved further by the reported recruitment of Dagmar Brandenstein, the managing director of SportA, the sports rights agency of public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF. SportA announced in May that Brandenstein, a well-known German sports industry figure, was to leave after little more than three years.

In 2003, KirchMedia sold DSF to EM.TV, the precursor to EM.Sport Media, with retailer KarstadtQuelle and Swiss investor Hans-Dieter Cleven also taking stakes. As the owner of DSF, EM.Sport Media already has an outlet for sports broadcasting, with a licence for both free-to-air and pay-television. The fusion of EM.Sport Media and Highlight Communications to create an independent broadcasting group with no ties to RTL or ProSiebenSat.1, the country's dominant commercial broadcasting groups, would be unlikely to meet with any regulatory resistance, it is understood. Kirch’s deal with EM.Sport Media was achieved through KF 15, his financial holding group formed in 2003 after the insolvency of KirchMedia in 2002.

EM.Sport Media this week acquired a five per cent share in Premiere Star, the pay-television satellite brand of Premiere. As part of the agreement, Premiere has agreed to work with Plazamedia, the television production company and new media provider, until the end of 2013, while DSF received a package of non-exclusive rights to English soccer's top-tier Premier League. The rights acquired by DSF are free-to-air, pay-television and IPTV until the end of the 2009-10 season, suggesting a possible use of them through Kirch's new broadcasting vehicle. Source: Sportcal, Rapid TV News, 26th Sep 2007

Elsewhere/Business: Scudamore Turns the Tables on Uefa in Money Debate

Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of English soccer’s top-tier Premier League, has played down concerns about commercialism in the domestic game, but says that measures are necessary to prevent the league’s media rights being infringed on. Michel Platini, the president of Uefa, European soccer’s governing body, recently wrote to the heads of state in all 27 European Union countries to express his fears about the growing influence of money in sport and calling on them to help change the European Commission’s white paper to provide more safeguards. However, UK prime minister Gordon Brown has already indicated that he will not intervene in the issue.

The Premier League has generated £2.7 billion from the sale of domestic and international television rights for three seasons, beginning this year, but Scudamore believes it is fair in its dealings with the clubs. In an interview with the UK’s Financial Times newspaper, he said: ‘The [Uefa] Champions League is more rampantly commercial than the Premier League. I have a formula which redistributes money far more widely, equitably and evenly than Uefa does, and we retain far less here with far more modest offices. Uefa as an edifice is huge.

In his letter, Platini had called for governments to become involved to combat threat posed to soccer by ‘the malign and ever-present influence of money.’ However, Scudamore believes that the flow of cash into the game has been largely positive, saying: ‘Twenty years ago, there was no TV deal, the grounds were awful, the game was in a complete state. It is investment that has made it how it is. What was Mr Brown supposed to do? Stop investment?’ He added that soccer was experiencing ‘a golden age,’ adding that it is ‘hard to imagine interest in football waning.’

Scudamore told the Daily Telegraph recently that there was potential for further growth in television rights revenue, particularly in the international market, which now makes up 28 per cent of the league’s income, up from 10 per cent before. He believes that this figure could rise to 50 per cent in the next rights period, from 2010 to 2013. One of Scudamore’s main concerns is the use of Premier League clips, which news agencies claim they should be able to show for free under news access provisions. Source: Sportcal, The Sports Economist, 26th Sep 2007