Friday, 6th April 2007

FRIDAY SPOOF!

Manchester United Fans Face Trouble in Rome
Warning: Harmful if taken seriously :)

Reports on the Manchester United website this morning predict trouble for fans traveling to tonight's Champions League tie at the Stadio Olympico in Rome. Roman Centurions, it says, will keep United supporters at the arena for 90 minutes after the game has ended, to facilitate their stoning by home fans, and may even release a lion onto the terracing.

Italians, who are thought by many to be cowards, like to throw stones, particularly when there is no danger of getting hurt themselves, but the stonings do not usually last more than an hour, and police expect all but the most seriously hurt United fans to be back on their buses by midnight. The traveling Red Army has been a thorn in the paw of many a European Police Force over the years, not least when an unruly mob of bingo-mad old pensioner women rioted after refusing to stump up the cash for overpriced cups of tea in Istanbul in 2001. Source: The Spoof.com, 4th April 2007


INFO BOX

London Marathon
* The London Marathon first took place on Sunday, 29 March 1981 with 7,500 participants
* The race now has over 35,000 participants each year and around three times as many applications for places
* Marathon world records have been broken twice in London, once in the men’s race and once in the women’s
* In 2002, Khalid Khannouchi completed the men’s race in two hours, five minutes and 38 seconds
* A year later, Paula Radcliffe broke the women’s world record by recording a time of 2:15:25, a record which still stands.
Source: Infostrada Databox, March 2007


SPORTS SHORTS

* China Telecom has called for a full opening-up of IPTV services in China this year. Although China Telecom is permitted to run IPTV testing networks in Shanghai, Taizhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Xi’an and Hanzhong, more than 95 per cent of its 300 local IPTV networks have not been given the go ahead. China Telecom had approximately 190,000 IPTV subscribers at the end of 2006, predominantly in Shanghai. Rival China Netcom Ltd has also set its sights on acquiring IPTV licences in 2007. Source: Advanced Television, 5th April 2007

* Zee Telefilms plans to launch a domestic cricket league in India this summer. The parent of the Zee Sports channel, which also owns 50% of Ten Sports, indicated that the Indian Cricket League would feature six teams taking part in Twenty20 matches in India in July-August, says the BBC. Zee chief Subhash Chandra said that the series would be expanded to 50-over cricket later. The league will be co-promoted by financial group IL&FS, offering US$1 million in annual prize money. Source: Sports Media, 5th April 2007

* The Philippine Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) have implemented regulations for cases filed against local operators suspected of cable TV signal piracy. Offended parties may file complaints against cable operators with IPO or with the NTC, which exercises jurisdiction over cases involving violation of permits, license issuance and authority to operate radio and TV broadcasts. If the NTC determines that the case is an IPR violation, it shall endorse the complaint to IPO for appropriate action. Source: Advanced Television, 5th April 2007

* Bayer Leverkusen’s Rudi Voller believes UEFA should re-introduce a cap on overseas players representing their club sides. Voller said the issue of too many overseas names was serious and favours the approach recently mooted by UEFA of forcing clubs to play at least six home-grown players. He said: “The 6+5 solution would be ideal. It would help young players get a game and would stabilise competition so there are not only a few teams in Europe who have an advantage because they have the money.” Source: Football Insider, 5th April 2007

* Inter Milan’s Patrick Vieira insists the introduction of technology in football is not the way forward. Experiments have already taken place at Udinese with cameras to judge whether the ball has crossed the line, while it is now common for officials at Serie A matches to be linked by radio. But Vieira fears the increased use of technology will only damage the game. “I don’t want to change anything so radically. We are trying to change too much. I believe too much technology would take some passion out of the game.” Source: Football Insider, 5th April 2007

* Michelin has failed to convince a French court to overrule a decision by the FIA to appoint rival Pirelli as the sole tyre supplier to the World Rally Championship for three years from 2008. The French company is claiming there were irregularities in the tender process and plans to appeal. In February, Pirelli was awarded a three-year contract by the FIA after being chosen ahead of BFGoodrich, the Michelin-owned brand which presently supplies works teams in the WRC. Source: Sportcal, 5th April 2007


MORE NEWS

Elsewhere/Rights: Cable Coverage of Extra Innings Games Salvaged

US cable television viewers will continue to have access to ‘Extra Innings,’ a package of Major League Baseball games from local markets, after a deal was reached with a consortium owned by major networks. MLB reached a seven-year agreement with In Demand, which was set to lose coverage this season, and the games will be available to a potential audience of up to 40 million homes.

In Demand, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable, will make the subscription package available to other cable operators and distribute the MLB television channel when it is launched in 2009. The league had come under political pressure to conclude a cable deal after signing an exclusive seven-year $700-million agreement with satellite broadcaster DirecTV as there were fears that viewers on other platforms would be frozen out.

Senator John Kerry, the senator from Massachusetts, led the campaign for Extra Innings to remain on cable. It is reported that, as part of the compromise, In Demand and DirecTV will each receive about 16 per cent equity in the MLB Channel. Under the original agreement, DirecTV was to have a 20-per-cent stake. Source: Sportcal, Mediaweek, Broadcasting & Cable, 5th April 2007

China/New Media: Xiamen CATV to Deliver VoD

BigBand Networks which provides broadband multimedia infrastructure for video, voice and data, announced that media firm Xiamen CATV is to deliver high-speed data and IP video. Xiamen is to make news, sports and other local video content available to subscribers on-demand, by delivering it over cable modems to TVs via IP-enabled set-top boxes.

BigBand’s Cuda and FastFlow software provide the foundation for Xiamen CATV to deploy advanced IP service implementation that delivers content—including television programming and Internet content—reliably. Xiamen serves over 400,000 subscribers in China’s Fujian province. The operator decided in 2006 that it wanted to augment traditional digital video services with high-speed data and IP video, and selected BigBand Networks’ for its CMTS project. Source: Indian Television, 5th April 2007


ARTICLES, COMMENTS & OPINIONS

Singapore: When a Market is Not Quite What it Seems

In Singapore, print and broadcast are pre-defined markets, each with its individual dominant licensee. To prevent possibilities of Singapore Press Holdings in newspapers, MediaCorp in free-to-air TV, or StarHub Cable Vision in cable TV from abusing their dominant positions, regulators have imposed special obligations on them. But what of new media, such as mobile broadband and IPTV? What is the definition of media markets in these cases?

Economic theory says that to define a market, there must be real substitutes for a product. Thus, if StarHub's cable TV and MediaCorp's terrestrial TV can substitute one another, then together they comprise a much larger market. How about the English Premier League? An estimated 1.4 million viewers in Singapore watched EPL matches on ESPN this season. For the next three seasons, StarHub has acquired exclusive rights to show the matches over cable, Internet, and 3G. StarHub outbid ESPN and SingTel - which planned to show the matches over its new IPTV service - to do so.

EPL matches are arguably a market by themselves. Studies by the European Commission confirm, for instance, that sport broadcasts are not only distinct from other TV programmes, but they can also be further divided into smaller markets. That is, viewers do not regard broadcast rights for blockbuster movies as substitutes for sports. Broadcast rights for tennis, boxing, golf or motor racing, are likewise not substitutes for soccer either.

In 2005, the commission completed a sectoral survey which affirmed that premium sports content - soccer, the Olympics, and F1 racing - constituted separate markets because of their distinct consumer appeal and lack of substitutes. Secondly, TV broadcast of sports and their transmission over mobile broadband did not substitute for each other. Consumers would pay for the latter even if they had the former at home because 3G allowed them to 'personalise the viewing experience' where there was no TV - on the subway or in the office - when highlights or short clips would suffice.

Finally, the survey demonstrated that, for customers, sports content over mobile broadband was quite distinct from other mobile content, i.e. mobile sports coverage was a separate market from other 3G content. Non-EU countries of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway conducted a parallel study at the same time and came to basically the same conclusions.

Given that EPL is a market unto itself, the fact that StarHub managed to establish a stranglehold over it tells of serious market failures in the acquisition of premium content. In that market, there are just a few big buyers facing a few providers. Strong contractual relations between them also raise barriers to entry. The EPL itself is a cartel that sells all available broadcast rights on behalf of all English football clubs, which may not individually sell their own games. It also restricts the number of games sold.

As it stands, StarHub's stranglehold over the mobile EPL rights means that it is the company most likely to become dominant in mobile broadband, since premium sports content will probably be as important to mobile broadband as it is to pay-TV. Commentary by Andy Ho, Senior Writer at The Straits Times Interactive, 4th April 2007