Wednesday, 22nd June 2011

RIGHTS FEES

=>  New cross-carriage broadcast rules in Singapore means the winning bidder for the 2012 Euro Championships must make games available to rival media platforms. Both StarHub and SingTel are prepping bids for rights to Euro 2012 but legislation by the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) last year prevents exclusive carriage of TV coverage on either operator. Sportfive is distributing the Euro 2012 broadcast rights in Singapore. The new legislation would affect deals signed after March 2010, triggered by high subs rates for top sports content such as the Premier League. In late 2009, SingTel defeated StarHub for Premier League rights from 2010/11 to 12/13 in a deal worth up to S$400 mil ($324.4 mil). There could also be FTA coverage of 2012 Euro if Mediacorp follows up its initial interest to show live games from the tournament for the first time since Euro 2004.

=>  French pay-TV, Canal Plus, agreed an exclusive rights deal to show France’s top-tier handball league, LNH, until 2015. The 4-yr multi-platform deal comes into effect next season and replaces previous domestic deals with Orange and Eurosport which ran from 2008/09 to 10/11. Rights fee was lower than the previous contract; a tender was issued at end 2010 and drew a joint bid of €1 mil ($1.43 mil) /year from pubcaster France Télévisions and Eurosport, which was half of what was paid by Orange and Eurosport in the last rights cycle. Amaury Sport Organisation was appointed by the LNH to help negotiate this new broadcast rights contract.

=>  BSkyB has agreed a record deal that may exceed £90m to maintain its position as the Rugby Super League's primary broadcast partner until 2016. Sky held exclusive live rights to the Super League since it paid £87m in spring of 1995 in a deal which was artificially inflated by the agreement of the British pro game to switch to a summer season and side with Rupert Murdoch in his battle to secure TV rights to Australian rugby league. Subsequent deals fell in value until a 5-yr agreement worth £63m to run from 2004/08 was struck, although that was renegotiated upwards in November 2007 to £50m in a new 3-yr contract from 2009/11.


BROADCAST & RIGHTS DISTRIBUTION

=>  ESPN Star Sports clinched exclusive live coverage of Spain's La Liga for the 2012/13 to 2014/15 across 18 Asian markets. The deal covers standard and HD coverage, broadcast, online and mobile, plus select games in 3D in Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Taiwan, Philippines, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and North Korea, plus China and South Korea in English only. Coverage will be delivered on ESPN, Star Sports, ESPN HD, ESPN Player and Mobile ESPN. La Liga rounds out a football portfolio at ESS that already includes the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and England home matches and major tournaments from the Asian Football Confederation.


STATS & DATA

=>  Fixed broadband and IPTV are showing exceptional growth in Asia according to the Broadband Forum. Of a 15.2 mil increase subscribers in Q1 2011, fixed broadband in Asia grew by 2.9%, the biggest quarterly increase in the two years, representing an CAGR of 11.93%, based on data prepared by Point Topic. IPTV showed an increase of 34% in 12 months ending of March 2011. Asia is the fastest growing region for broadband with 16.21% - double that of the Americas. Asia's fixed broadband subs is 42% of the global total, up from 40% last year. Strong growth is seen in China with 42% of the net additions to global subs. Europe is still the largest region with over 21 mil subs, but Asia is catching up fast with 18 mil and both China and Taiwan showing growth of over 50%. Of the 2.9 mil new subs added this year (Q1 2011), 1.4 million came from Asia.

=>  Mobile TV and video apps account for 40–60% of mobile data traffic on wireless networks according to the Mobile Analytics Report from Bytemobile. Increasing usage of mobile TV and video is driven by growth in the uptake in laptops, smartphones and tablets—in particular the iPhone, iPad and Android-based devices which are used to consume majority of mobile video. The report for Q2 2011 revealed that half of data traffic that is generated by these devices is from video. Although traffic across mobile networks have discernible peaks and troughs, wireless networks need to support video demand at all hours of the day.