Tuesday, 1st March 2011

RIGHTS FEE & DISTRIBUTION

=>  Argentina formally presented its ‘Sport for All’ programme, creating a list of major events that must be broadcast on free TV. Most sports on the list will be broadcast nationwide on state broadcaster, Canal 7, which already shows up to 10 first division soccer matches each week, after the government ‘nationalised’ the media rights to the league in a 10-year deal worth 600-million pesos ($149 million) per season. Pay-TV sports broadcaster TyC Sports is a staunch opponent of the legislation and pan-regional counterparts Fox Sports and ESPN also have concerns. Fox Sports could be the most seriously affected - it pays $50 mil per season for exclusive pan-regional TV rights to the Copa Libertadores and Sudamericana.

=>  Paraguayan rights agency, Teledeportes, which holds media rights to Paraguay’s top soccer league, offered 30 bil Guaraníes (US$6.6 million) /season to renew through 2016. The offer is a huge increase on the agency's present deal, which pays close to 9 bil Guaraníes for exclusive rights to the end of 2012 season. Teledeportes’ existing deal provides for live coverage of 3 matches /week on its cable channel Unicanal, carried on the Cablevisión platform, and highlights on Canal 13, a commercial broadcaster owned by Paraguayan entrepreneur Christian Chena.

=>  World Sport Group has been appointed to produce live and magazine broadcasts for Singapore’s soccer S.League while StarHub has renewed live rights for the league 12 days after the start of the 2011 season. The Football Association of Singapore said StarHub will broadcast one live match per week on its cable TV platform. Terrestrial, MediaCorp, will show a delayed telecast of StarHub’s matches. Last year, StarHub acquired live rights for two matches per week during the 2010 S.League, becoming the first broadcaster to pay a rights fee for matches. However, the FAS and StarHub took a long time to negotiate a deal for 2011, delaying the start of broadcast for the 2011 season.


BROADCAST

=>  India’s Dish TV has crossed the 10 million subs mark for its direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV platform, having added a million customers since November 2010 and achieved almost 75% growth in subscriber additions this year. Dish TV was the first DTH operator to market when it launched its pay-TV service across India in 2003. It is currently the largest player, in terms of subscriber numbers, in a highly competitive broadcast arena which now counts six private DTH operators in total. In addition to Dish, Indian viewers can also access DTH subscription-based services from Tata Sky, Sun Direct, Airtel Digital TV, Reliance Digital TV, and Videocon d2h. Together they broadcast to around 30 million viewers in India.

=>  Malaysia's Media Prima Berhad announced strong results for the financial year ended 31 Dec 2010 with a profit after tax and minority interests of RM254.4 million ($83 million). The 31% increase in after-tax profit against the RM194.8 million in 2009 was achieved due to substantial increase in the group's net revenue by over 100% to RM1.547 billion ($506 million) against RM744 million. Increase was driven by strong performance of its media assets which include TV, print, radio, outdoor and new media. Media Prima's TV networks' revenue grew by 19% and had a combined household audience share of 46% despite proliferation of new TV channels and platforms. TV3 continued to lead in ad revenue with an audience share of 45.1% on free-to-air TV and 28.1% on the pay-TV platform. In August, Alt Media introduced TonTon video portal that provides customised online viewing bundled with social networking interactivity. TonTon has garnered over 1.2 mil registered users five months into launch.

=>  Indonesia’s Indosiar Karya Media has secured preliminary approval from its board to merge with Surya Citra Media, owners of SCTV. Shares of Indosiar and Surya Citra soared by 6.32% and 8.57% respectively following the announcement despite broader benchmark Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) falling by 0.11%. Indosiar's shares soared 778% in the past year while Surya Citra's climbed 375%, outperforming JCI's 36% jump.

=>  Singapore has announced that radio and TV licence has been abolished effective 1 Jan, 2011. Licenses were introduced in 1963. The fees collected were used to fund public service broadcast content. In 2009, Singapore's Media Development Authority (MDA) collected S$132.5 mil ($103.4 mil) in fees. From 2011, MDA will receive government funding for public service broadcasts. MDA will work closely with the industry to continuously improve the quality and reach of PSB content, including making them available on new platforms, in step with Singaporeans' changing media habits.

=>  The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) approved public broadcaster KBS's request to increase license fee by 40% to 3,500 won ($3). The proposal is subject to approval of the National Assembly and if passed, the license fee will be raised for the first time in 30 years. The KCC said there is a need to consider the fee revision to help the public broadcaster attain a solid financial structure. KBS is to use the funds also to improve the reception in certain areas. KCC also suggested the license fee be reviewed in 2014. Households with TV sets currently pay a fixed fee of 2,500 won ($2.20) under the Broadcast Law. All analogue services in Korea are scheduled to be terminated by 2012.


DATA

=>  Advertising spending across all media in Malaysia recorded a 16% increase to RM7.7 billion ($2.5 billion) in 2010, Nielsen Company reports, with TV alone up 18%. TV ad spend rose to RM2.9 bil ($947.2 mil) and increased share to 37.7%. Newspaper still took the lion's share with 50.8%. The biggest gains were seen with in-store up 43.2% and the Internet up 28.9%. Large-scale events such as the World Cup, promotion for local festivals and aggressive product promotions have been attributed for the boost in advertising spend and led to a strong finish for the year.

=>  Mobile TV markets offer potential across the world over the next 2 years according to RNCOS’ “Global Mobile TV Forecast to 2013” which predicts mobile TV subs worldwide will grow at a CAGR of over 47% from 2010 to 2013 on the back of increasing mobile subscribers. Rapid growth in overall mobile phone market have led to high mobile TV penetration rates in major markets, with penetration now over 90% in many countries. RNCOS sees big opportunities for mobile operators, content providers and handset manufacturers. The research suggests that success of mobile TV rests fundamentally in operators’ pricing models, along with availability of handsets that support good picture quality at high data transfer rate. In terms of delivery methods, RNCOS expects streaming video technology to dominate the global mobile TV subscriber base by the end of 2013.


EVENT

=>  AFC competitions director Tokuaki Suzuki is hoping to see more countries qualify for the AFC Champions League 2012 through the Special Mission Team projects for this year. Last year, Suzuki’s team visited 11 countries to inspect their FAs, leagues, clubs and stadiums to verify that they met AFC Champions League criteria, however, only Japan met the stipulated conditions. However, Suzuki expressed satisfaction for result of efforts made by member associations involved in the professional football project.

=>  The 2011 season of FIM Superbike World Championship will be the biggest for broadcasters and sponsors. The 24th season of the championship starts at Phillip Island, Australia. Owner, Infront, is confident the 13 races will exceed the cumulative television audience of 500 million in 2010. Over 350 minutes of live material will be produced every race weekend and Infront will produce 'On the Spot', a dedicated Superbike World Championship news feed for each event in the series. Each news feed will run for five minutes, with English commentary, and be edited immediately after the race for distribution via satellite as well as the official website. Infront will continue to offer its 26-min highlights, available via satellite. In 2010, Infront claimed that the races averaged 80,000 spectators, adding up to one million across the season.

=>  The FIVB (international volleyball federation) has condensed June’s Beach Volleyball Swatch World Championships from 11 to 7 days in a bid to boost TV ratings. The tournament was due to take place in Rome, Italy between June 16 and 26, but has now been brought forward to June 13 to 19. Vicente Araujo, secretary of the FIVB Beach Volleyball Commission, added: “With the tournament now fine-tuned to seven days, more matches will be played each day and broadcasters will have more opportunity to deliver this world class sports event to their audience, creating more exposure for beach volleyball and the athletes.”


OTHER BUSINESS NEWS

=>  The OC for the 2012 Olympic Games in London dismissed a demand by the NOC of Iran for the redesign of the official games logo on the grounds of alleged racism. The Iranians have written to the IOC to protest the logo, alleging that the four bold numerals representing 2012 can actually be read to spell the word 'Zion', a term that refers to Jerusalem and, by extension, Israel. A 2012 spokesman said the logo was launched in 2007 following testing and consultation and were surprised that a complaint has been made only now. When asked if there were any plans to change the logo's design, London 2012 said simply: "No."