Wednesday, 20th July 2011

RIGHTS FEES

=>  Swiss football’s Superleague accepted a joint bid from Cinetrade and Swisscom for domestic broadcast of a complete package of matches. The 5-yr deal, reportedly worth €26 mil (US$36.5 mil) /season, will begin in 2012. The deal has been met with anger in some quarters as all but one game /week will be shown on pay TV. A rival bid from Swisscable and SSR would have allowed 36 matches a season to be shown on free-to-air television. The ten-team league is currently rated 16th in Europe by UEFA.


BROADCAST & RIGHTS DISTRIBUTION

=>  MediaCorp’s Channel 5 has secured the broadcasting rights in Singapore for the upcoming 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifier between Singapore and Malaysia. Both games will be shown live as the two compete for a slot in the competition to be held in Brazil. The first of two legs will be played in Singapore on 23rd Jul and the return match on 28th Jul in Kuala Lumpur. The 2nd round match is Singapore’s first game in the competition after receiving a bye through the opening round. Malaysia overcame Taiwan on away goals to set up the match.

=>  Hong Kong’s IPTV, Now TV, has renewed acquired exclusive broadcast rights to UEFA 2012 European Championships, which will take place in Poland and Ukraine. Now TV will broadcast all 31 games from Euro 2012 in HD and show various pre-tournament programming, highlights programmes and tournament reviews. The broadcaster was the rights-holder for the last European Championships in Austria and Switzerland in 2008. Subscribers to Now TV’s ‘Premium Mega Sports Pack’ can access Euro 2012 matches at no extra cost. The 16-team Euro 2012 tournament will be staged from June 8 to July 1.

=>  ESPN Star Sports has launched 24-hr HD channels ESPN HD and STAR Cricket HD. Both channels are available on Videocon d2h and STAR Cricket HD securing further carriage on Tata Sky platforms. STAR Cricket HD is set to showcase live coverage of India's cricket tour of England starting July 21 with the Champions LeagueT20 and India's tour of Australia set to follow. ESPN HD offers F1 coverage from the Hungarian GP and the U.S. Senior Open Golf and Major League Baseball throughout July. Next month, the service will start its coverage of the 2011-12 season of the Barclays Premier League. The two new channels join ESPN STAR Sports' existing services in India, ESPN, STAR Cricket and STAR Sports.

=>  Real Madrid is looking for potentially lucrative expansion of its branded content in China, a huge market for the biggest football teams. RM signed an agreement with WISeKey for exclusive distribution of the club’s mobile content in China this coming season. The deal is part of the new media strategy WISeKey is deploying with famous brands, allowing them to monetise brand value by associating its users in selected countries with restricted mobile content rights. WISeKey and its partners will distribute and market RM’s mobile content, covering China and the extended network of Chinese Real Madrid fans. The club estimates over 100 mil fans in China alone. Real Madrid distributes digital content in over 40 countries worldwide and recently agreed a deal with Spanish, Prisa, to distribute mobile content in 25 countries in North and South America.

=>  Thailand's TrueVisions will roll out its HDTV service in Phuket. In 2007, TrueVisions first tested HD TV with the Barclay's Premier League HD, Discovery HD, National Geographic Channel HD, History Channel HD, and some HD programmes on True Series. In Nov last year, the company finally started broadcasting three HD channels - Reality HD, HBO HD and TrueSport HD - but these were only available to cable TV subscribers. TrueVisions now has added 11 more channels to the service, including TrueSport HD2. Although HD channels are only available to cable subscribers, TrueVisions said satellite subscribers will soon be able to receive the service starting in 2012.

=>  MP & Silva has added a magazine show to the programming line-up from Italian soccer’s Serie A that is offered to international broadcasters. MP&S distributes the international broadcast rights to the league, had announced ‘Rivals,’ a third weekly magazine show available for the forthcoming 2011/12 season. The new magazine show will combine match footage, highlights and interviews in a programme that MP & Silva says will "dig deep into the historical and classic Serie A rivalries that extend beyond the clubs’ shared history and supporters to the players." MP&S already offers ‘Total Italian Football’ preview and ‘Serie A Show’ highlights programmes to international broadcasters. Rivals and The Serie A Show will be aired on Mondays, while Total Italian Football will be broadcast on Thursdays.


STATS & DATA

=>  Mobile video consumption is forecast to exceed 693 bil minutes by 2015, according to In-Stat. Nearly two-thirds of smartphone owners use their device to watch video. That number climbs to 86% for tablet users although there are significantly more smartphone viewers than tablet viewers currently, but says that gap is narrowing. However, tablet viewers watch more video on their device and are willing to pay a higher price for content compared to smartphone users.