Monday, 7th March 2011

RIGHTS FEE & DISTRIBUTION

=>  IEC in Sports has been re-appointed by the Asian Rugby Football Union to handle the TV arrangements for rugby union’s HSBC Asian Five Nations 2010 competition, scheduled for April 23 to May 21. The tournament involves live production of 6 weekly matches, with televised games scheduled in Hong Kong, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka and Korea. Broadcasts of this year’s competition are expected to reach over 90 territories and 85 million potential viewers worldwide. Last year’s broadcasters included Star Sports, Eurosport Asia, J-Sports, Sky Networks (New Zealand), Zee Sports in India and Al Jazeera, the Middle Eastern broadcaster.

=>  Peruvian soccer officials have branded the $30 mil in revenues earned by the country’s first division soccer league in 2010 as a "joke." The 16 clubs playing in the first division Copa Movistar turned over a combined $30 mil in 2010 season, up from $25 million the year before. The comparison was drawn with Chile, whose first division earns close to $150 mil each year. 60% of Copa Movistar’s revenues in 2010 came from TV rights fees, paid by the two main broadcasters, CMD and DirecTV. Only 25% came from advertising and sponsorship, 10% in gate receipts and 5% from player sales. By comparison, Argentinian and Brazilian clubs earn up to 40% of their revenues from player sales.


BROADCAST

=>  The WTA Tour has held preliminary talks with the ATP Tour about combining media rights in the future, but integration is more obvious in event organisation at present. Tennis remains attractive for broadcasters, with TV hours increasing year on year and there has long been a sense that the two tours would benefit commercially and logistically from merging their rights. However, the WTA Tour insisted it remains committed to its major media partners, Eurosport and Regency Enterprises, which licenses TV rights in other parts of the world. The present deal with the two companies, which was signed in 2006, expires at the end of this year. In 2010, there was 6,846 hours of worldwide coverage, a 22% increase on 2009, including 1,072 hours from the season-ending WTA Tour Championships, an increase of 69%. The WTA Tour has sought to engage with fans of women’s tennis through social media channels – Facebook and Twitter – which now has 10 million followers through these channels.


DATA

=>  Kagan’s ‘Economics of Mobile Programming’ report suggests that 2010 marked the slowest year of growth yet for US for mobile video revenue. Moreover, large national programmers such as ESPN and Nickelodeon continued to be considered ‘a marketing expense’. Kagan cited ESPN grabbing top spot in the US mobile video market with nearly $47 million in 2010 revenue but pointing out that such a figure represents less than 1% of the $7 billion it generated from MSO affiliate fees and advertising in the same year. Yet Kagan believes that the surge in tablets like the iPad 2, could boost mobile video demand.


EVENT

=>  The JSW SDAT WSF World Cup comes to Chennai and will see world squash champions competing for prize money of $125, 000. The event is a joint initiative by the World Squash Federation (WSF) and the Squash Rackets Federation of India (SRFI). An event of this magnitude is being held for the first time in India since 1998 and will be played on all-glass courts at a mall. The 2011 WSF World Cup is the first of three mixed team biennial events to be held in Chennai until 2015. World Champions who have confirmed participation; current World No.1 Nicol David (Malaysia) and Ramy Ashour (Egypt’s World No.2). TV coverage is by ESPN, who will be producing highlights of the event.

=>  State-owned, China Unicom, is announced as a major sponsor of the 2011 World Table Tennis Championship in Rotterdam from 8th May. The deal, brokered by TMS International, marks the 4th time that China Unicom has supported the event. Hugely popular in China, an estimated 300 mil play the sport and is the country’s largest recreational sport. In 2010 in the World Championships held in Moscow, China received over 150 hours of broadcast, more than 40 hours of which was covered by mainstream sports channel CCTV.

=>  National boxing associations from 13 countries risk being sanctioned by AIBA, including suspensions that could prevent boxers from taking part in Olympic Games qualifiers and, ultimately, in the games themselves. The 13, including England, Ukraine, Thailand and Bulgaria, are accused of trying to postpone last year’s AIBA congress in a bid to prevent re-election of its president, Ching-Kuo Wu by going to court in Switzerland. The court dismissed their claim, and the congress went ahead, with Wu being re-elected after Paul King, the candidate of the 13 associations, was prevented from standing. Wu had been accused of manipulating rules as a pretext to prevent federations from proposing a candidate to stand against him, accusations he strongly denies.


OTHER BUSINESS NEWS

=>  Karl Samuelsson has been appointed as MD for IEC in Sports' Asia-Pac, Middle East and Africa business. Samuelsson will be based in IEC's Hong Kong office as of August. Since 2007, IEC in Sports is part of Lagardère Sports, one of four divisions within the Group. IEC in Sports distributes TV rights of sport events to a variety of media platforms worldwide to TV stations and media companies. IEC’s current list consists of 250 events with a total annual volume of over 3,500 hours. Samuelsson is currently the COO of IEC in Sports.