Thursday, 3rd July 2008

INFO BOX

The World’s High Net Worth Individuals
Merill Lynch’s World Wealth Report published on Info IQ, 1st Jul 2008

Driven by market capitalization growth in emerging economies, the wealth of the world’s high net worth individuals (HNWIs) increased 9.4% to $40.7 trillion in 2007, according to the 12th annual World Wealth Report from Merrill Lynch. The number of HNWIs in the world increased 6% in 2007 to 10.1 million, the number of ultra high net worth individuals (Ultra-HNWIs) increased 8.8%, and for the first time in the average assets held by HNWIs exceeded $4 million. HNWIs are those with net assets of at least $1 million, excluding their primary residence and consumables; Ultra-HNWIs - who number some 103,000 - are those with net assets of at least $30 million, excluding their primary residence and consumables. The highest proportion of Ultra-HNWIs to HNWIs is in Latin America.

The global economy grew 5.1% 2007, down slightly from the 5.3% global growth in 2006, according to the Report, which forecasts that global HNWI wealth will grow to $59.1 trillion by 2012, advancing at a rate of 7.7% per year.

BRIC Nations Lead the Pack
Impressive growth of emerging economies was boosted largely by thriving export sectors and heightened domestic demand. The largest regional growth of the HNWI population occurred in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, with increases of 15.6%, 14.3%, and 12.2%, respectively; while the largest regional growth in wealth occurred in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. The BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) continued to play pivotal roles in the global economy in 2007, driven by impressive economic gains and robust market capitalization growth.

India led the world in HNWI population growth at 22.7%, driven by market capitalization growth of 118% and real GDP growth of 7.9%. Although India’s real GDP growth decelerated from 9.4% in 2006, current levels are considered more stable and sustainable. China experienced the second largest expansion of their HNWI population, advancing 20.3% - an increase fueled by market capitalization growth of 291% and real GDP growth of 11.4%.

Shift to Safer, More Familiar Investments
The diverging macroeconomic environments at either end of 2007 helped define HNWIs’ asset allocation strategies. Building on the optimism of 2006, the early months of 2007 showed HNWIs betting heavily on riskier asset classes. But as the year wore on, and financial market turmoil and economic uncertainty intensified, HNWIs began to retrench, shifting their investments to safer, less volatile asset classes.

The Report found that cash/deposits and fixed income securities accounted for 44% of HNWI financial assets, up 9% from 2006. Fixed income securities saw a 6% increase in asset allocation, accounting for 27% of holdings, up from 21% in 2006. Globally, HNWIs continued to decrease their holdings in North America and showed greater interest in domestic market investments, preferring more familiar ground amid heightened levels of economic uncertainty.

Green Investing Gains Traction
Due to overall heightened interest in the environment, green investing has become widely popular across the globe in recent years, offering investors lucrative returns and an opportunity to become actively involved in social responsibility. The total investment in clean technology, for example, increased to US$117 billion in 2007, up 41% from 2005, with notable strength in wind and solar segments.

The Middle East and Europe were the most environmentally attuned HNWI and Ultra-HNWI populations, with participation ranging from around 17% to 21% in 2007. In comparison, only 5% of HNWIs and 7% of Ultra-HNWIs in North America allocated part of their portfolio holdings to green investing.

North America was also the only region in which social responsibility was the primary driver of HNWIs’ green investing. Among HNWIs worldwide, approximately half pointed to financial returns as the primary reason for their allocation to green investing.

Mobile Payments to Reach $300bn by 2013

The gross transaction value of mobile payments for digital goods, such as music and games, and physical goods, such as books, is forecast to exceed $300bn worldwide by 2013. The figures, released by analyst house Juniper Research on Tuesday, found that there is a significant and immediate opportunity for mobile payment services, systems, software and supporting services to underpin the processing of these payment transactions. Telecoms.com, 1st July

China Telecom on the Cusp of 1mn IPTV Subscribers

China Telecom has revealed that it has now exceeded 940,000 subscribers for its IPTV service, and expects to pass 1mn subscribers very soon. The service is provided in cooperation with Shanghai Media Group (SMG) and has been available in major cities such as Shanghai, Jiangxu, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Shaanxi since 2005, offering broadcast and on-demand content, including high-definition, as well as information services. The telco recently issued a tender for the supply of 574,000 set-top boxes, including 536,000 high-definiion and 38,000 standard-definition units. IPTV-news.com, 1st July 2008


SPORTS SHORTS

* ESPN-Star Sports has acquired exclusive TV rights in South Asia for football’s 2010 World Cup. The deal includes the rights to over 275 international football matches, including the World Cup, the Confederations Cup, and women’s, youth, futsal, and beach soccer FIFA events. ESS will show all 64 matches of the tournament live, with commentary in English and Hindi, plus match preview programmes, and a daily review programme. The deal ensures the events, including the 2010 FIFA World Cup, will be seen by the possible audiences across the India Sub-Continent; Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Sport Business, Sportcal, Worldscreen, Televisionpoint.com, 2nd Jul 2008

* Neo Sports has announced an agreement with the Amaury Sport Organisation to provide live coverage of the cycling tournament Tour De France from 2008 to 2010. The channel will telecast the next edition of this tournament live from 5 July at 3:30 pm. The tournament will continue till 27 July. Indiantelevision.com, 2nd July 2008

* Dubai Racing Channel (DRC) is undertaking a fundamental role and mission in entertaining the UAE society, says Darweesh Mohammed, director of the newly born TV channel. DRC started its experimental transmission last month after having successfully concluded several agreements with the main broadcasters of horse races around the globe. "We have acquired the TV rights of all British and American races in addition to selective races from France, Italy, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Germany but our transmission is restricted to Arabsat and Nilesat only since we are a free-to-air channel and have to comply with the complications of the pay-per-view TV rights in Europe and the US," he clarified. Khaleej Times, 2nd Jul 2008

* Singapore Digital has received a license to extend its TV2GO digital video broadcasting-handheld (DVB-H) mobile TV trial until the end of November. The next stage of the trial, which kicked off in June 2007, will see additional content for users and interactive functions, including chat-room and real-time financial services. The interactive component will be made possible with a digital interactive platform from Sofia Digital, integrated with the Nokia DVB-H broadcast platform, Mobile Broadcast Solution (MBS). Available to anyone in Singapore with the appropriate DVB-H-ready handset, the TV2GO trial will now offer two new mobile TV channels in addition to the news, music and entertainment content already on offer. Worldscreen, 2nd Jul 2008

* India Olympic Association (IOA) President and MP Suresh Kalmadi said Sunday India will make a strong bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympic Games. India has been considering a 2020 Olympic bid for the past several months. UNI reports at the closing ceremony of Olympic Week celebrations Kalmadi asked the athletes to strive hard to garner medals both at the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games and the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. He said the success of the twin games to be held in the country for the first time, will certainly serve as the barometer for the 2020 Games bid. Sports City, 1st Jul 2008

* Qatar Tennis Federation (QTF) will host the world's richest tennis tournament this year. The Sony Ericsson WTA Tour season-ending championship will be staged at the renovated Khalifa International Tennis Complex from November 4-9, 2008. The eight top players will take part in the singles while four pairs will battle for honours in doubles in the US$4.5m tournament. The QTF staged the Qatar Total Open in February and the Qatar Telecom German Open in Berlin in May. The WTA Tour is spending nearly $15m in the next three years to take the women’s game to its existing tennis fanbase and new audiences. This year alone WTA Tour will spend $4m on the advertising campaign. Sports City, 2nd Jul 2008

* Arabic Computer Systems (ACS) will operate a mobile phone content business for FC Barcelona in the Middle East after agreeing a partnership deal with the Liga BBVA giant. ACS will distribute in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Lebanon, Qatar, Jordan, Yemen, Algeria and Egypt through to the 2010-11 season. Arabic Computer Systems Limited, which is part of the National Technology Group, specialises in enterprise resource planning, Internet services, e-commerce, Internet payment gateways, mobile Internet and IT security. Sports Media, 2nd Jul 2008

* Setanta has agreed a deal with digital terrestrial pay-television operator, Top Up TV, for distribution of its Setanta Sports channel. The deal will enable viewers that already receive the Freeview, free-to-air digital terrestrial service to upgrade to receive the Setanta pay-television service. The launch of the service will coincide with the start of the Premier League’s 2008-09 season in August. Other sports rights held by Setanta in the UK include soccer’s Scottish Premier League, for which the broadcaster earlier this week agreed a four-year, £125-million ($248.8-million) extension, from the start of the 2010-11 season. Sportcal, 2nd Jul 2008

* NBC has big plans for online Olympic coverage, but if you want to watch events online in real-time, that's too damn bad. NBC reportedly paid $900 million for U.S. broadcasting rights, and the network obviously doesn't want to cannibalize its TV audience by broadcasting stuff online simultaneously. Still, we wonder how long it will be before online licensing rights are more valuable than TV broadcasting rights. Wired Blog Network, 1st Jul 2008

* Fox Sports Net will launch a new 13-part series later this week that will look at “Baseball’s Golden Age”. The series, which will debut on Sunday at 20:00 ET, will feature “never-before-seen footage” of the game’s most influential players, their families and the fans in each 30-minute episode. The series has been produced by Flagstaff Films. The first show will focus on the rivalries between the various baseball teams in New York. Sports Media, 2nd Jul 2008

* A new pay-per-view online video portal currently being tested by the International Cricket Council (ICC) and Vividas could be rolled out to offer coverage of all major ICC events later this year. High-definition highlights footage of the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 tournament last year is being streamed via the ICC-branded portal at www.worldtwenty20.tv until the end of July. However, if the portal proves to be a success, it could be used to provide footage of the Champions Trophy one-day international tournament in September and all key ICC events thereafter. Sports Insider, 2nd Jul 2008

* The Tour de France, still reeling from last year's doping affairs, will face the daunting task of restoring cycling's image when it starts its three-week journey of more than 3,500km on Saturday. A scandal-free race would lift its battered reputation but another doping-hit edition in front of more than two billion television viewers would be disastrous for an event that more than any other crystallises the plague of drugs on sport. ASO shook up the field by not inviting the Astana team because of their past doping record, consequently leaving out last year's champion Alberto Contador of Spain. Sports City, 2nd Jul 2008

* Castrol has sealed a six-year deal with FIFA to become the official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup until 2014. With the closing of this agreement, the lubricants company gets the worldwide rights for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil and the two FIFA Confederations Cups which fall within the 2007-2014 period. Indiantelevision.com, 1st July 2008

* Tandberg Television is providing a range of MPEG-2 video compression technologies to the European Broadcast Union (EBU) to be used in coverage of high profile sporting events this summer. Tandberg’s digital TV systems will play a key role in the delivery of footage of both standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD) sports action from the 2008 Olympic Game, the Tour de France and Wimbledon to more than 650 million viewers in 56 countries in and around Europe. Sports Media, 1st July 2008

* With an aim to continue its partnership with athletics, Toyota has become the official sponsor of the International Association of Atheltics Federations (IAAF). The event will be held from 15-23 August 2009, at Berlin in Germany. Toyota has been associated with the IAAF since the 9th IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Paris in 2003. It further continued its partnership for Helsinki 2005 and Osaka 2007. In its role as Official IAAF Partner, the company supported the infrastructure for these championships by providing cars. Indiantelevision.com, 2nd July 2008

* Global Crossing, a leading global IP solutions provider, today announced it will provide a link between Rio de Janeiro and New York for Eurovision, the premier sports and news content distributor for the world's top broadcast and media platforms, during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. The contract expands the broadcaster's existing Private Line Services to accommodate enhanced audio visual content. Yahoo! Finance, 2nd July


MORE NEWS

India/General: IPL Website Hits 50 Million

The official website of Indian Premier League, www.IPLT20.com, attracted over 50 million page views from over 5.2 million unique visitors during 18 April to 1 June 2008. Meanwhile, the website's live scoreboard received 5.2 million page views over 24 matches, representing nearly a quarter of overall site traffic. And over 5.4 million videos were viewed with around 15,500 simultaneous viewers of live matches online.

Bangalore Royal Challengers versus Chennai Super Kings played on 21 May was the most viewed match with 2.2 million views. The www.IPLT20.com photo gallery averaged 10 page views per visit and Fantasy Cricket on Facebook averaged 33 visits per user.
Live Current Media Inc and DLF Indian Premier League revealed the numbers today.

Live Current Media Inc, the hands behind the creation of the site, secured digital media content, live streaming and mobile rights for an average of $5 million annually.

Live Current Media chief corporate development officer Mark Melville said, "Generating over 50 million page views without a single dollar of marketing investment clearly indicates the natural demand for, interest in and ease of access to the IPLT20.com site. Online sports media in general and cricket specifically offers the breadth and depth global fans seek through any-time interaction, enabling access to multiple layers of content, photos and video from any Internet connection, 24-hours a day for live or archived content."

And after the success of IPLT20, Live Current Media plans to launch the official BCCI site www.bcci.tv in beta before the 18 July Test match between India and Sri Lanka and global cricket site www.cricket.com in beta by August 2008. Sports City, 2nd Jul 2008

India/Broadcast: Tdsat Rejects Petition Seeking Intervention Between Sun and RCV

Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal (Tdsat) has dismissed a petition seeking directions to the Maran brothers-owned Channel Plus and Royal Cable Vision (RCV), a MSO owned by M K Azhagiri, son of state Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, to show Sun TV.

The petition, filed by the Federation of Consumer Organisations, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry (FEDCOT), had requested the tribunal to intervene into the on-going dispute between RCV and Channel Plus. FEDCOT had pleaded that the people of the state of Tamil Nadu were fond of programmes on Sun TV programmes and they were being deprived of viewing these. K Murugan, Secretary General of FEDCOT who appeared in person, said this was because of the political rivalry of Maran and Azhagiri.

However, counsel for Sun TV and RCV contended that they were negotiating on the lines of regulations drafted by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. RCV said an application was made by his clients on 24 June to M/s Channel Plus for supply of signals and this application was pending consideration. Tdsat Chairman Justice Arun Kumar in a brief order said, "In view of this, the petition is not maintainable. RCV is already trying to get signals from Channel Plus and therefore the petition is disposed off at this stage".

Justice Kumar noted that earlier on June 14 he had rejected the prayer of RCV for passing a direction to Channel Plus for supply of Sun TV signals but had directed Azhagiri-owned MSO to apply afresh after finding that it was not done in accordance with regulations framed by TRAI. According to the Interconnection Regulations, an MSO has to furnish a list of local or area cable operators who would be getting signals for their network. Indiantelevision.com, 2nd July 2008

Elsewhere/General: Superleague Formula Ready for Green Light

A little piece of history is set to be created later this summer when the worlds of football and motorsport collide and after more than four years of planning Superleague Formula roars from the grid. The UK's Donington Park is set to be the venue for the inaugural round of the series on August 30-31 with the goal to fuse the passions of the two sports. Twenty of the world's top clubs will do battle over six rounds of the first season with the field of V12-powered 750 horsepower single seater racecars bearing the colours of the teams.

Such a high-end concept has been attempted before, but never came to fruition and Superleague Formula co-founder Robin Webb admits that the homework has been carried out to ensure that the series is no flash in the pan. He told Football Insider: "If you look at it historically the combining of sports does not always work. So we had to spend a lot of money on research and investigation to see whether it had some legs. The more we spent on the research the more it proved to us what I suppose in hindsight seems obvious in that the category of people who support football and who support motorsport do come from a very similar sort of base."

Webb continued: "What motorsport really lacked, other than Ferrari, was passion and of course football lacks technology but has a hugely passionate fan base. We started to realise that if we could give the public something to cheer for outside the realms of football and which was slightly different then this could work and obviously we developed it from there. You are never really going to know whether a concept is going to be successful. The first thing we have to do is deliver a first-class product. You are really talking about two products in that one is the event that people go to and the other is the television experience which is so much more than the event itself. However, you do need the event as the validation of the product."

Superleague Formula will enter a congested motorsport marketplace with A1GP representing the last successful launch. Webb admits that an attractive 'hook' is key to the success of a new series, and with the cars sporting the colours of leading clubs such as AC Milan, Superleague Formula appears to have that edge. Webb said: "I actually co-founded A1GP and the idea really came from this one. This one has just been slower in development. It's all about the hook. You've got to give somebody something to shout for and have to decide whether it works or not and whether the people are attending in their numbers. Does it capture them and make a profit? I think after three years that A1 has now established itself. For us our first big event is in August and we literally have to get off to a good start."

Following the first round at Donington the first Superleague Formula season will take in the Nurburgring (Germany), Zolder (Belgium), Estoril (Portugal) and Vallelunga (Italy) before concluding at Spain's Jerez circuit on November 22-23. AC Milan, Al Ain, Anderlecht, Borussia Dortmund, Corinthians, FC Basel, FC Porto, Flamengo, Galatasaray, Olympiacos, PSV Eindhoven, Rangers and Sevilla are the 13 clubs to have signed up so far. For more on the development of Superleague Formula, check out forthcoming issues of Football Insider. Football Insider, 2nd Jul 2008