Thursday, 25th January 2007

HEADLINES OF THE DAY

Traffic Wins Brazil’s World Cup 2010 Qualifiers

Traffic Sports Marketing has announced a deal for the exclusive worldwide broadcast and sponsorship rights for Brazil’s nine home matches on the road to South Africa 2010. The South-American FIFA World Cup Qualifiers will run from September 2007 to November 2009, in a league format with home-and-away matches.

The top four teams will qualify automatically for the World Cup, while the fifth-placed nation will face a team from the CONCACAF region in a home-and-away play-off scheduled for November 2009. Brazil will play the following nine countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. The fixtures, which will be announced at the next CONMEBOL meeting in February, will all take place on FIFA dates.

The South-American World Cup Qualifiers will start shortly after Copa America 2007, which takes place in Venezuela in June-July and will be broadcast to more than 170 countries worldwide. Brazil’s nine home matches will be made available by Traffic on an international satellite, with English audio guide and international graphics. Source: Sport Business, 24th January 2007

Italy Falling Behind European Soccer Rivals, Says Report

Italian soccer is losing ground on its European rivals because of aging stadiums, supporter violence and an unbalanced television rights market, according to a study of European leagues. The success of Italian teams in European competitions and massive individually-negotiated television deals for top teams mask deeper malaise, claim the study’s authors.

Philippe Piola, head of entertainment studies at the Euromed business school in Marseille, co-authored the report with Ineum management consultants in Paris. Piola said: ‘Italy's stadiums are totally decrepit...there's a big imbalance in television rights [...] I'm pretty pessimistic unless there's a rethink.’

Top-tier Serie A broadcast rights are due to be sold centrally from the start of the 2007-08 season, although this could be delayed because of deals already in place. The study also found that Italian clubs face record losses in 2006-07 because of changes in the way payments are managed for player transfers.Average attendance at Italian Serie A games fell 14 per cent between the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons, although the drop is partly attributable to the league contracting from 20 to 18 clubs, it said. The study confirmed the financial dominance of English Premiership clubs in European soccer. Source: Sportcal, 24th January 2007

SPORTS SHORTS

* The Maltese Olympic Committee (MOC) signed an agreement with the four major TV stations in Malta regarding the broadcasting rights of the week-long sports festival between June 4 and 9. The contract entails more than 36 hours of broadcast with coverage, possibly live, of the opening and closing ceremonies. The value of this agreement exceeds Lm80,000. Source: The Times of Malta, 23rd January 2007

* China's Internet users increased 23% to 137 million, covering 10.5% of the country's population, at the end of 2006, and will likely grow more quickly in future, the China Internet Network Information Center said. China, the world's second-largest Internet market after the U.S., had 123 million users at the end of June, according to the center. China had 17 million users, mainly unmarried men between ages 18 and 24, who accessed the Internet on mobile phones mainly for emails and to get information. Source: Total Content + Media, Advanced Television, Rapid TV, 23rd January 2007


MORE NEWS

India/Rights: Prasar Bharati Moves Delhi HC against deferred live telecast

A day after terrestrial broadcaster Doordarshan was granted "deferred live" telecast rights to the ongoing cricket series between India and the West Indies, Prasar Bharati approached the Delhi High Court again on the matter. The appeal was filed by the pubcaster against the order yesterday by a single-judge directing Nimbus, the rights holder for BCCI organized cricket events in India, to give the feed to Doordarshan with a seven-minute time lag.

Prasar Bharati sources told Indiantelevision.com that the pubcaster's appeal was based on the validity of the Uplink-Downlink Guidelines issued in November 2005 that perforce allows DD to get the telecast feed. The pubcaster’s argument is that the guidelines are clear that the live feed should be given to both Doordarshan and AIR and that there is “no provision (in the guidelines) for a deferred telecast.”

Prasar Bharati has contended that viewers in the country cannot be divided into two segments and that there has to be equitable distribution of signals for all viewers, irrespective of whether they are linked to DTH, cable or non cable homes. Source: Indian Television, Exchange4Media, 24th January 2007

Elsewhere/Rights: UK Broadcasters Baulk at Asking Price for Euro 2008 Rights

The BBC and ITV in the UK face difficult negotiations as they seek a fair price for the rights to soccer’s 2008 European Championships, which will take place in Austria and Switzerland. Sportfive, the international sports agency that is distributing the rights on behalf of governing body Uefa, is seeking to raise £90 million ($179 million) from the UK market, well above the valuation of the two main broadcasters.

The agency wants to break up the perceived duopoly over European Championships rights that has been enjoyed by the BBC and ITV, which shared the rights for previous competitions through their membership of the European Broadcasting Union and have a similar arrangement in place for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups.

The EBU, the umbrella body of European public-service broadcasters, was the traditional partner of Uefa in rights distribution to European Championships, lost out to Sportfive in the bidding for the Euro 2008 rights. Sportfive was due to issue a commercial tender for the rights in the UK this week and hopes to drive up the price by pitting the BBC and ITV against one another in competition while also involving other broadcasters such as commercial broadcasters Channel Four and Five.

Competition in the UK is restricted by the fact that pay-television broadcasters such as British Sky Broadcasting and Setanta would not be able to show matches exclusively live because of 'listed events' legislation that dictates that all 31 matches must be available free-to-air. Italy is the only one of the ‘big five’ countries to have concluded a television deal for Euro 2008, with the rights having been snapped up by the public-service broadcaster Rai on the back of the national team’s 2006 World Cup victory.

In France, commercial broadcasters TF1 and M6 are understood to have jointly agreed to pay the €100-million ($130-million) fee that Sportfive had targeted, and will have the rights to show simultaneous coverage of France’s matches assuming the World Cup finalists qualify. In Germany, coverage could be split for the first time after public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF baulked at the reported €150-million asking price to show all 31 games, pointing out that this was the same price they had paid for 48 of the 64 matches at the World Cup.

No deal has yet been agreed in Spain, European soccer’s other major market. Source: Sportcal, 23rd January 2007


ARTICLES, COMMENTS & OPINIONS

Badminton Super Series Needs to Be Better

THE Badminton World Federation (BWF) launched its long-awaited Super Series but the organisation glitches of the first leg, the Malaysia Open badminton championships, did not help raise the profile of the sport. The 12-leg Super Series, was supposed to provide bigger prize money for the players and also make badminton television friendly.

While the BWF may argue that teething problems are common in a new venture, this is not the first time badminton’s world governing body is organising an international tournament. Except for cosmetic changes where BWF has grouped the major grand prix tournaments under the Super Series brand, increased the total prize money of several tournaments, slightly modified the draw and seedings, there is nothing new.
The first issue raised was on the eligibility rule for the main draw where only the top 28 players in the world gain automatic berths while another four must advance through qualifying rounds. However, lack of foresight on BWF’s part has seen the top 15 players competing in the first round, in the case of World No 1 Lin Dan of China and World No 12 Taufik Hidayat of Indonesia.

And doing away with the nationality separation rule saw players or pairs from the same country meeting each other in the preliminary rounds. China withdrew their top three shuttlers - World No 1 Zhang Ning, World No 2 Xie Xingfang and World No 8 Jiang Yanjiao - as they were expected to meet their back-up shuttlers in the preliminary rounds.

The trend is set to continue as BWF is convinced that the formula provides for open competition but the fact is, countries may start sending their players to the smaller grand prix tournaments to earn ranking points. This is because the Super Series winners will gain 9,000 points while the grand prix winners gain 7,000 points and the disparity in points is little that the grand prix tournaments could be worth competing for newly ranked players and pairs like Malaysia Open champions Koo Kien Keat-Tan Boon Heong who played in the qualifying rounds in KL.

The tournament schedule also breached BWF’s rule which does not allow matches to start after midnight. The organisers allocated four courts and with 40 matches scheduled on Thursday beginning 6pm, the matches were delayed for more than two hours. As a result, the last match of the day between World No 2 Jens Eriksen-Martin Lundgaard Hansen of Denmark and Thailand’s Sudket Prakamol-Patapol Ngernsrisuk, scheduled to start at 10pm, only commenced approximately 12.45am.

There was also no proper area to conduct interviews, with interviews conducted at corridors and this does not give the Super Series the high profile which BWF wants to create. Source: K.M. Boopathy comments on The New Straits Times, 23rd January 2007