DID YOU KNOW?
* That left-handed people are better at sports that require good spatial judgment and fast reaction, compared to right-handed individuals.
* Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
SPORTS SHORTS
* The US PGA Tour and SMJ have announced a partnership that will provide Japanese golf fans unprecedented mobile experience for its Tour events. SMJ has been granted the rights to build and distribute tournament content on the PGA TOUR-branded mobile site across all three major mobile carriers’ 3G networks in Japan. With the acquired exclusive rights, SMJ will distribute all the US PGA TOUR tournaments previews and highlight movies from each day during the tournament, along with live scoring, the latest news, statistics and photos. Sports e-Media, 17th Jan 2008
* Ligue 1 Orange club Olympique Lyonnais has secured a link-up with the Chinese Football Association. The agreement will initially see the China national team players visit Lyon's training ground this month to prepare for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, but future commercial developments and player exchanges are in the pipeline. At a press conference to unveil the partnership, Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas said he hoped the relationship would raise the profile of the club in China. Aulas revealed that a Chinese-language version of its official website will be launched in the coming months, following in the footsteps of several of the world's leading clubs. Football Insider, 17th Jan 2008
* China now has 210 million internet users after numbers grew more than 50% last year, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). An extra 48 million logged on in the second half of last year, compared with just 25 million in the first half. The new figure, recorded at the end of December, means China is on the verge of overtaking the US as the world’s largest internet market by user numbers. The US counted 212 million people online in July last year, but had added just 8.25 million in the previous two years. Of the 210 million, 163 million log on using broadband, while 50.4 million use their mobile phones. Telecomasia.net, 17th Jan 2008
* FIFA has announced the launch of a new initiative for world football's governing body as its first official store opened its doors in Singapore. Located at Changi airport, the store aims to offer a unique range of official merchandise inspired by the past, present and future of the game. After Singapore, further FIFA official stores are due to open in London, Tokyo and Los Angeles, as well as in important emerging markets such as Latin America, China and India. Designers have created five unique clothing lines for the official store, which aim to reflect the heritage and dynamism of the sport. FIFA's exclusive licensing representative until 2014, Global Brands Group, will operate the stores. Football Insider 17th Jan 2008
* TNS announced today that its TV and radio audience measurement business licence in China, held by CSM Media Research, a joint venture between TNS and China's CTR Market Research, has been renewed for another 10 years. Established in 1996, CSM Media Research is a leading market research company in China. With an initial license for 10 years, the joint venture has been exceptionally successful, with city sampling panels, provincial panels and a pan-China national panel providing accurate monitoring of local, regional and national TV and radio audience levels across the country, says an official release. IndianTelevision.com, 17th Jan 2008
* Japan’s government is reportedly investing ¥300 million (US$2.8 million) in 2008 in support of broadcaster NHK’s research into Super Hi-Vision broadcasting. The goal of the project is to get Super Hi-Vision defined as an international standard to eventually replace high-definition. The new technology is also known as “Ultra High Definition” and shows images consisting of 33 million pixels, 16 times more than NHK’s Hi-Vision high-definition technology. The government will also call for input from private sector companies including those from communications and broadcast sectors, as well as home electronics firms. A date of 2015 has been reportedly set for commercial launch of the technology. Rapid TV News, 17th Jan 2008
* JumpTV acquired the exclusive North American online and mobile rights for the 2010 South American World Cup qualifying tournament from sports, media and entertainment company SCP Worldwide. The deal covers the 70 remaining matches of the FIFA 2010 World Cup South American region qualifying matches and up to 40 associated "friendly" matches, from SCP Worldwide. JumpTV said it had acquired an unspecified equity stake in SCP's overall broadcast rights for this content, and that it and SCP have secured distribution deals for this content with ESPN and other entities. It is thought to have paid $3.5 million for a minority stake in the rights for all broadcast platforms. Sport Business, Worldscreen, Sportcal, 17th Jan 2008
* The 2008 EHF European Handball Championship, running from January 17-27, will feature the most comprehensive global media and marketing programme implemented by Infront Sports & Media, the exclusive commercial partner for the European Handball Federation’s (EHF) premier event. Distribution of media rights for the Championship has been successfully concluded for 80 territories in Europe, Middle East and Asia – and the event will be transmitted by more than 70 broadcasters, including a record number of almost 20 radio stations. Most broadcasters will provide live or near-live transmissions, depending on the time zones and broadcaster schedules. Sports e-Media, Sportcal, 17th Jan 2008
* IEC in Sports has reported strong broadcast interest from global media market for its St. Petersburg to Beijing Rally, which takes place for the first time this June. The “Transorientale” project will see IEC partnered by sister company Sportfive. The gruelling Rally will start from Russia, in St. Petersburg on June 12th, taking competitors 9,300 km across three vast countries and terrains, passing through Kazakhstan before reaching northern China and eventually finishing at the Great Wall on June 28th after 17 days of competition. Recent appetite for the rally, both on a broadcast and participation level has grown dramatically. Several major broadcasters are reported to have expressed a major interest in supporting the Rally whilst from a competition perspective, the entry list has jumped from 100 to more than 300 entries in recent weeks. Sports e-Media, 17th Jan 2008
* Turner Sports and the National Basketball Association are set to announce that Turner will manage the NBA's digital properties, including the 24-hour cable channel NBA TV. Under the deal, the NBA would still own the properties, but hand over the day-to-day operations to Turner Sports. NBA TV, launched online in 1999 and became a fully fledged cable channel in 2003 and has about 12 million subscribers. Turner has been a NBA television partner for 20 years and runs digital properties NASCAR.com and PGAtour.com. During the summer, it signed an eight-year deal with the NBA for TV and digital media rights. Sport Business, 17th Jan 2008
* The organisers of the Euroleague, European basketball’s top clubs competition, are considering changes to the format in order to produce more ‘interesting and competitive’ games. The plan is to increase the number of games in the second phase, when the lower-ranked teams have been knocked out. This would be made possible by reducing the number of games in the first stage. At present, the 24 participants are divided into three groups of eight, in which each team plays all of the others home and away. However, it is felt that the level of interest is restricted by the fact that 16 teams – five from two of the groups and six from the other – progress to the next round. Sportcal, 17th Jan 2008
MORE NEWS
Elsewhere/Rights: French Clubs Could Seek to Sell Rights Thanks to Legal Row
The LFP, the French professional soccer league, has told a court that there is a risk that its clubs could demand to sell broadcast rights themselves, as a case initiated by Canal Plus, the pay-television broadcaster, continues to disrupt the LFP's proposed collective rights tender. The TGI, the French district court in Paris, is preparing to announce the outcome of a request from incumbent rights holder Canal Plus to suspend the tender for French soccer’s top-tier Ligue 1 until the outcome of its legal challenge against the tender is known.
The tender process for the broadcast rights to the top-tier Ligue 1 is due to be completed at the end of January but Canal Plus wants it to be delayed beyond February 19, when the TGI is due to rule on the case. The TGI case was one of two launched against the league by Canal Plus in the wake of the new tender for rights issued for 2008-09 to 2011-12. The new tender was dramatically changed from the tender for the current period, with the number of packages tripled to 12 and the contract lengths increased to four years, measures designed to increase competition in a pay-television market dominated by Canal Plus after its takeover of rival TPS.
Canal Plus’ objections concern the rights package for a magazine show on Sunday evenings, the ‘exploitation’ of audiovisual rights by the league and the reserve price determined by LFP president Frédéric Thiriez. The other case questioned the right of the LFP to handle the Ligue 1 production itself, but was rejected by the Conseil d’Etat, France’s state council. Canal Plus’ legal challenges have been viewed as an attempt to disrupt the tender process and enable the broadcaster to secure individual deals with clubs as they become anxious about when they will receive television income.
In court, Canal Plus continued to stress the importance of the Ligue 1 rights to the broadcaster, despite consistently warning in the lead-up to the tender that it would not match the value of its present €600-million ($881.4-million) -a-year contract, and Bertand Méheut, the company president, claiming that soccer had become less important than in the past for the broadcaster. Sportcal, 17th Jan 2008
Elsewhere/Rights: Zambia and Namibia Denied Free-to-air Cup of Nations
National broadcasters in Zambia and Namibia are the latest to reveal that they have been unable to pay the rights fees being demanded for soccer's upcoming Africa Cup of Nations. In Zambia, the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation, was unable to offer the $1.78 million requested by LC2 Medias FA, the company contracted to sell the rights on behalf of Sportfive, the international sports marketing agency. LC2 then reduced the fee to $1.48 million, but ZNBC could only raise $150,000, and Joseph Salasini, the broadcaster’s director general, has accused the rights holder of ‘essentially looking at exploiting the nature of football in Africa, which is wrong.’
Meanwhile, in Namibia, whose team has also qualified, neither NBC, the national public service broadcaster, nor free-to-air competitor One Africa Television have been able to agree deals. Newera.com, the Namibian news website, claims that Sportfive demanded $1.44 million for the live rights to all 56 games in the tournament, which kicks off on Sunday. NBC said that it had been in negotiations with Sportfive since last year but that the agency ‘would not budge on the exorbitant rights fee, even when we tried to strike a deal for Namibia’s group matches only – the company would have none of that and insisted on a sealed package.’
National broadcasters in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda have all described the rights fees as excessive, although a deal has now been agreed in Angola. Barry Rukoro, the acting secretary general of the Namibian Football Association, said, 'It's a very sad situation that many Namibians would not be able to watch their own players in action on national television since many football followers do not have access to digital television.'
However, he added that he was not surprised that NBC had not secured the rights as it had been unable to facilitate live coverage of last week's friendly between Namibia and Senegal, despite the fact that it was offered to the national broadcaster for free. Sportcal, 17th Jan 2008
Elsewhere/General: NBC TV Viewing Rises when Sport Shown Online
Internet users are more, not less, likely to watch television coverage of a sports event if it is also available online, according to research carried out by NBC, the US Olympic television network. Perkins Miller, senior vice president of digital media at the broadcaster, said that online coverage of a sporting event increases people’s consumption of the event on television by a factor of between 30 per cent and 50 per cent.
However, in an apparent paradox, Miller also admitted that NBC would not simulcast all of its television coverage of this summer’s Beijing Olympics via its NBCOlympics.com website, for fear of ‘cannibalising’ its all-important television ratings. In a presentation at this week’s inaugural Digital Sport 08 conference in Amsterdam, organised by World Trade Group, Miller pointed out that there are now more laptop computers in television households in USA than television sets.
Out of 3,600 hours of coverage of the Beijing Olympics that NBC plans to broadcast on television, 2,200 hours will be shown online. This compares with the 2004 games when NBC offered virtually no online video coverage of the games. The Atlanta games of 1996 on NBC showed just 160 hours of coverage on a single channel. For this year’s games, NBC is investing much of its attention in the first few days on the swimming competition and in particular on US swimmer Michael Phelps’ bid to break Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals at one games.
The focus on swimming led to controversy in 2006 when the IOC agreed a schedule for the games in which the swimming finals and some gymnastics finals were moved from their customary position in the afternoon or evening to the morning, apparently at the behest of NBC, in order to suit peak US viewing hours. NBC paid $3.55 billion for coverage of the games from 2000 to 2008 and will pay a further $2.201 billion for the rights for the 2010 and 2012 games. Sportcal, 17th Jan 2008
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