RESULTS
U.S. Open 2007 – Day 9
Men’s Singles Results Highlights
Carlos Moya ESP (17) def. Ernests Gulbis LAT 7-5 6-2 6-7 (5-7) 6-4
Novak Djokovic SRB (3) def. Juan Monaco ARG (23) 7-5 7-6 (7-2) 6-7 (6-8) 6-1
Juan Ignacio Chela ARG (20) def. Stanislas Wawrinka SUI 4-6 6-2 7-6 (8-6) 1-6 6-4
Women’s Singles Results Highlights
Justine Henin BEL (1) def. Serena Williams USA (8) 7-6 (7-3) 6-1
Women’s Doubles Results Highlights
Yung-Jan Chan TPE (5) Chia-Jung Chuang TPE (5) def. Bethanie Mattek USA (16) Sania Mirza IND (16) 6-3 3-6 6-4
Mixed Doubles Results Highlights
Victoria Azarenka BLR Max Mirnyi BLR def. Zi Yan CHN (3) Mark Knowles BAH (3) 7-6 (7-5) 6-4 upset!
Meghann Shaughnessy USA Leander Paes IND def. Liezel Huber USA Jamie Murray GBR 6-4 (4-7) 7-6 (7-5) [10-5]
THIS WEEK
Wed to Thu, 5th to 6th Sep 2007
US Open Tennis Championships 2007: Quarter-finals
Fri, 7th Sep 2007
US Open Tennis Championships 2007: Women’s Semi-finals
Sat, 8th Sep 2007
US Open Tennis Championships 2007: Men’s Semi-finals
US Open Tennis Championships 2007: Women’s Finals
Sun, 19th Aug 2007
US Open Tennis Championships 2007: Men’s Finals
AVP Crocs Tour 2007: Final Day – Las Vegas Gods & Goddesses
Superbikes World Championship 2007: Race Day – Euro Speedway, Lausitz, Germany
Masters Football: Finals
COURTSIDE: AT THE US OPEN TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIPS 2007
US Open Official, 3rd Sep 2007
Everyone is so tech-savvy these days it’s hard to be way out in front, gadget-wise, of the guy standing next to you. Unless, that is, you are at the US Open. At the Open, if you’ve got one of the mobile television devices passed out at the USTA Billie King National Tennis Center for the first time this year by American Express, you have basically, from a tennis perspective, double-bagled the majority of your fellow tennis fans. Hold one of these "Lvis" devices, and -- your correspondent here can speak from an all-to-brief experience -- you feel you have entered the upper-echelons of wi-fi connectedness. A tennis paradise. A US Open Nirvana. On the device's surprisingly clear 4 3/8th-inch screen (cell phones typically have 2-inch screens), you get up to six courts and the live broadcast from USA Network. You can also see replays if you missed a point, see the action in slow motion and get player bios.
Top Three Players Never to Have Won the US Open
Bjorn Borg. It is difficult to fathom that the Swede who so dominated the French Open and Wimbledon from the mid-1970s could not win the US Open in nine attempts (he only ventured once to Australia in 1974, and lost in the third round). The closest he came in New York was the 1980 final against John McEnroe which was not as memorable as the Wimbledon final the same year - more of a five set scrap. The 1981 final between the pair was also won by McEnroe who, in consecutive points in the fourth set, bamboozled Borg with a drop shot and subsequent lob. Borg got into his car, drove off, and did not play a grand-slam again.
Jim Courier. The Floridian made his grand-slam breakthrough in 1991 when he won the French Open, defeating his Nick Bollettieri Academy room-mate Andre Agassi in a memorable five-set final. He also reached the final of the US Open that year but, although favoured to win, he succumbed meekly to Stefan Edberg, the Swede, in straight sets. Courier won the Australian and French titles in 1992, the year when he became world No 1 and helped the United States to the Davis Cup, but he never reached a US Open final again.
Evonne Goolagong-Cawley. The Australian reached the final of the US championships four years in succession at Forest Hills from 1973-76, losing once each to Margaret Court and Billie-Jean King and twice to Chris Evert, the last of which was her heaviest defeat, 6-3, 6-0. Cawley said of Evert: "She seems to think that she'll get a nosebleed if she comes to the net, so she hangs back there like a battleship shelling a port miles away. Boom, boom, boom, over and over again, harder and harder. I wondered where the power came from."
DID YOU KNOW?
Tongan rugby union player Epi Taione is reported to have changed his name as part of an innovative sponsorship deal ahead of this year’s Rugby World Cup. Taione will be known as Paddy Power, after the Irish-based bookmaker, for the duration of the tournament, which begins on Friday. It is a condition of a five-figure deal between Paddy Power and the cash-strapped Tongan team. Tonga open their campaign against the USA on September 12 and will also face Samoa, South Africa and world champions England in the pool phase. Paddy Power is offering odds of 7 to 1 against Taione scoring a try against England in the match on September 28. Source: Sportcal, 4th Sep 2007
SPORTS SHORTS
* KT, the largest telephone and broadband line operator in Korea, has launched its IPTV offering to its Megapass broadband Internet service users across the nation. Mega TV is expected to form a healthy rivalry with Hanaro Telecom's 'Hana TV' service, which has secured more then 500,000 users and aims to double the number by early next year. KT also expects to draw 300,000 subscribers this year and to increase the number to one million next year. The new Mega TV service will offer a multitude of video-on-demand programming services, and a range of interactive TV services. Source: Advanced Television, 4th Sep 2007
* Indian pay-television channel focused on cricket, Neo Sports, has agreed a long-term carriage deal with Tata Sky, a leading direct-to-home platform. Neo Sports and Neo Sports Plus will be immediately available on Tata Sky. The channels are owned by Nimbus Communications, owners of the rights to India’s home matches and domestic competitions. Recently, Neo Sports decided to distribute its channels independently after ending an agreement with rival, Star India. Neo Sports is rolling out its channels ahead of India’s one-day international series against Australia in October and says it has already agreed cable distribution deals in major cities in north, central and west India. These include Delhi, Gurgaon, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Camper, Jaipur, Bhopal, Indore, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Baroda. Source: Sportcal, Rapid TV News, Indian Television, 4th Sep 2007
* Prasar Bharati will let ESPN-Star Sports undertake the marketing of the upcoming Twenty20 World Cup cricket matches telecast on Doordarshan. The catch is that ESS will have to meet the reserve price per match fixed by DD for the World Cup matches. ESS will share live and clean feed with Prasar Bharati for all the matches India plays, the semi-finals and the final, irrespective of whether India reaches the final stages. The marketing model will be on the lines of the arrangement between DD and private broadcaster Nimbus for the India-West Indies series earlier this year. During the one-day series, DD had said it would be able to generate Rs 4.26 crore for the series, while Nimbus (which held the rights for these matches) had said it would generate Rs 22 crore if it were to undertake the marketing for DD. Source: Economic Times, 4th Sep 2007
* Mumbai-based telecoms solutions and service provider, Tech Mahindra, is in the race to provide and manage infrastructure to host the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s cricket content on cell phones. The BCCI is expected to shortly float tenders for the same. Sources close to the development said the company, which has been increasing its focus on value-added services (VAS), approached the BCCI to facilitate the hosting of content on mobiles. The BCCI’s Lalit Modi confirmed the development. “Yes, Tech Mahindra has contacted us but we have asked them to follow the tender route,” he said. Tech Mahindra is also in talks with International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) to host content for mobile devices. Source: The Business Standard, 4th Sep 2007
* AFC President Mohamed bin Hammam today welcomed Dato’ Seri Najib bin Tun Abdul Razak, Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, and Dato’ Seri Azalina binti Othman Said, Minister of Youth and Sports, to AFC House for their first visit to the headquarters of the Asian Football Confederation. The visit marked the development of closer relations between Asia’s football government body and the Malaysian Government. Following a warm welcome, AFC officials took the opportunity to present AFC’s development programmes including ‘Vision Asia’, the Grassroots & Youth Programme, and the AFC Professional Leagues project. The Deputy Prime Minister and the AFC President agreed on the powerful role of football, as not only a sports concept, but also a tool to improve society and benefit communities. Source: AFC News Release, 4th Sep 2007
* The 2007 WNBA Finals will reach a record 203 countries in 31 languages courtesy of a record 74 television partners. The coverage for the Finals, which will air in the US on ESPN/ESPN2, breaks last years mark’s of 198 countries in 29 languages via 60 television partners. The WNBA has entered into agreements with 11 first-time television partners for the 2007 WNBA Finals: GDTV-Chongqing and Shanghai TV (China); Urheilu+kanava (Finland); J sports 1, J sports 2 and J sports Plus (Japan); NBA TV-CanalSat Horizons, NBA TV-CanalSat Reunion (Pan Africa); NBA TV-CanalSat Caraibes, NBA TV-Amnet (Pan Latin America); NBA TV-TCC (Uruguay). Source: Sport Business, 4th Sep 2007
* London-based TV production provider, Input Media, is to produce the all boxing programming for European pay-television broadcaster, Setanta Sports. In July, Setanta signed a deal to broadcast the fights of boxing promoter Frank Warren, including those of Joe Calzaghe, the WBO super-middleweight champion. Input Media will begin by producing Setanta’s coverage of a Britsih featherweight title fight between Warren’s Andy Morris and John Simpson. Setanta announced earlier this year that it would use a specially-built new transmission suite at a production centre belonging to Input Media to broadcast Setanta Golf channel, which launched in January. Source: Sportcal, 4th Sep 2007
* Rugby’s global icon, Jonah Lomu, arguably one of the most influential and inspirational players in the history of rugby, will be online direct with sports fans every day throughout the 2007 Rugby World Cup exclusively on Yahoo! Eurosport. Fans can ask Jonah questions and interact with him directly on his daily blog, watch him on his video blog, and watch videos of Jonah as he talks about rugby, the matches, the teams, the excitement, and what he thinks about the action as it unfolds. Online games and competitions will run throughout the World Cup on Yahoo! Eurosport where fans can win exclusive merchandise and for an opportunity to meet Jonah in person. The championship kicks off with France-Argentina on September 7 and runs until the Final on October 20. Source: Sports e-Media, 4th Sep 2007
MORE NEWS
Southeast Asia/Rights: SEA Games Rights to Be Offered Free
This year’s Southeast Asian Games will, after all, be offered free of charge to terrestrial television in the competing countries, after a plan to charge for the rights for the first time was dropped during a meeting of SEA Games Federation members yesterday. Vietnam’s VTC cable television station had already reached a preliminary agreement with the organising committee for this year’s games in Thailand to acquire the exclusive television rights for $300,000. But Vietnam’s national Olympic committee claimed that the rights were not the organising committee’s to sell and was supported by the federation, which stressed that the rights and trademarks of the games belonged to it and not to local organisers.
Broadcasters were being asked to pay a rights fee for the first time after Suntipab Techavanij, chairman of the rights division for this year’s games in Thailand, said that the extra revenues were needed to cover the cost of staging the event, estimated at $6.6 million. The rights will now revert to the established regime in which they are shared equally among the national Olympic committees of participating countries free of charge, and the NOCs then allocated them to national broadcasters. However, the federation said that the issue will be discussed again at the end of this year and that the plan to commercialise the rights could be revived for the next games in Laos in two years’ time. This year’s games, which will feature 43 sports, are scheduled for December 6 to 16. Source: Sportcal, Thanhnien News VT, 4th Sep 2007
Asia/New Media: India, China Will Drive Internet
Arguing that Asia's huge populations will be the future drivers of the Internet, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz said he expected the bulk of the server maker's revenues in five years to come from the Asia Pacific (Apac) region, much of that from India and China.
Schwartz said the region, the fastest growing for Sun, is likely to account for 40% of its revenues by 2012. The region contributed 17% of the company's $14 billion revenues reported last year, but the region saw an over 11% growth in revenues in the year, almost twice that of Sun's overall growth. "Five years ago, if you had to set up a data centre, it had to be in Manhattan, or may be in the Bay Area. But in the coming years, given the talent, resources and needs, most data centres will be in Apac," Schwartz said.
The internet momentum, he said, is "shifting from wealthy countries to heavily populated ones like China, India and Indonesia". With the explosion of social networking sites, the largest users of the internet today, he noted, are teenagers. He said the internet is also being creatively used by varied institutions to bring services to people in poorer countries who are otherwise difficult to reach out to. "The internet is the most powerful social utility the world has ever seen. And countries with higher populations will use the internet more," he said, indicating that demand for Sun's products and services - including data centres that combine computing power and storage spaces and which are the heart of the internet world - will see a corresponding traction in the Apac region that accounts for 65% of the world's population.
Schwartz sees a massive growth in developer community in the Apac region. India's developer numbers are expected to rival that of US in a couple of years. In Sun's developer network, India and China account for over a million of developers, nearly 50% of total worldwide number. "Where the world's developers are, that's where growth is likely to be the most. It creates a lot of economic and partnership opportunities," he said. Schwartz has been the architect of Sun's drive to make its products, including Java, Solaris open source, a strategy put in place about a year and a half ago. The belief is this would encourage a wide swathe of developers to use these products to develop applications, which in turn would generate demand for Sun's internet infrastructure and services. Source: The Times of India, 3rd Sep 2007
India/General: On Track to for Formula 1
India’s hopes of staging a Formula 1 motor racing grand prix are rising after an inspection of possible sites around New Delhi, according to Suresh Kalmadi, president of the Indian Olympic Association. Kalmadi told Reuters: ‘We are happy with the progress. We are on track,’ after a two-day visit by circuit designer Hermann Tilke, who will report back to the series promoter Bernie Ecclestone. The IOA has already accepted a conditional offer to stage a grand prix in 2009, subject to stringent conditions including commercial agreements that mmust be signed by the end of this month.
Hopes of an Indian Grand Prix have also been boosted by this week’s news that the Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya is fronting a bid for the struggling Formula 1 team Spyker. Mallya and Michiel Mol, Spyker’s director of Formula 1, have made an offer of €80 million ($109 million) for the team, which has been accepted by Spyker Cars, the Dutch sports car manufacturer. The deal should be finalised within the next month and could involve the return of Indian Formula 1 driver Narain Karthikeyan, presently a test driver for Williams, to the world championship. Source: Sportcal, 4th Sep 2007
Elsewhere/General: Broadcast Revenues Fuel Record Transfer Spending
Transfer spending by English clubs has exceeded £500 million this summer, around two thirds higher than the previous record of £300 million spent in summer 2006, according to analysis by the business advisory firm, Deloitte. New owners at Premier League clubs combined with the increase in broadcast payments to clubs for the 2007/08 season, are key drivers of the unprecedented rise in spending. Paul Rawnsley, director in Deloitte’s Sports Business Group, commented: “This summer’s transfer spending by English clubs has beaten all previous records, but as Premier League clubs will receive around £300 million of extra broadcast payments during the 2007/08 season the increase in transfer spending is not a surprise.
On a net transfer basis Premier League clubs spent around £140 million more in 2007 than 2006, well below the increase in broadcast payments they will receive this season. We expect total player wages to also increase but by a much lower proportion than the c.80% per cent rise in gross transfer spending this summer.” Clubs in the top four English divisions spent more than £500 million on transfers during summer 2007, up by around two thirds from around £300 million in summer 2006. Total spending on transfers by Premier League clubs in 2007 (January and summer windows) exceeded £530 million, up by more than 60 per cent on 2006 (£333 million).
The increase in transfer payments is a result of both higher average transfer fees and an increased number of transfers. The average transfer fee paid by Premier League clubs increased from around £3.5 million in summer 2006 to £4 million in summer 2007, whilst the number of transfers for a fee exceeded 100 for the first time in a transfer window (up from around 80 in summer 2006). The English clubs which invested the most in new players in 2007 were Manchester United (£51 million), Liverpool (£50 million), Tottenham Hotspur (£40 million) and newly promoted Sunderland (£35 million). Source: Sport Business, Sportcal, The BBC, 4th Sep 2007
Global/General: IBM Survey Confirms Viewing Control Trend
A new IBM Institute for Business Value online survey of consumer digital media and entertainment habits, shows audiences are more in control and increasingly savvy about filtering marketing messages. “Personal internet time rivals TV,” suggests the survey, entitled Consumers in a Multiscreen World. Among consumer respondents, 19% stated spending six hours or more per day on personal internet usage, vs 9% of respondents who reported the same levels of TV viewing. And 66% reporting viewing between one to four hours of TV per day vs 60% who reported the same levels of personal internet usage.
Consumers are seeking “consolidated, trustworthy content, recognition and community when it comes to mobile and internet entertainment. They are increasingly turning to online destinations like You Tube, MySpace, Facebook, games or mobile entertainment vs traditional TV.” IBM’s survey forecasts that “advertising agencies will go beyond traditional roles to become brokers of consumer insights, cable companies evolving to home media portals and broadcasters and publishers racing toward new media formats.” The survey was conducted from mid-April through mid-June in the USA, UK, Germany, Australia and Japan. Source: Rapid TV News, 4th Sep 2007
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