Tuesday, 10th April 2007

SPORTS SHORTS

* South Korea has awarded nationwide mobile TV broadcasting licences to free-to-air broadcasters, KBS and MBC. The broadcasters will launch their ad-supported mobile channels on Korea’s terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (T-DMB) spectrum outside of the capital Seoul. KBS will launch nationwide next month, with MBC launching nationwide in August. T-DMB should be available to or all urban areas by then. The platform will initially offer 6 video and 1 audio channels. Source: Rapid TV News, Indian Television, Asia Pacific Broadcast Union, 9th April 2007

* Japan's KDDI aims to offer mobile service in the USA using Sprint Nextel’s network. KDDI, second-biggest mobile operator in Japan after NTT DoCoMo, aims to cater to Japanese customers in the United States. KDDI will offer services using CDMA standard, developed by Qualcomm, and adopted by U.S. carriers Verizon and Sprint Nextel. That is different to the W-CDMA standard of technology popular in Europe and Asia. Japanese operators have been eying foreign revenue sources since slower subscriber growth is expected at home market. Source: Ken Radio, 9th April 2007

* PrimEdge, Inc. announced that it is discussing exclusive licensing rights with Absolute Fighting Championships (www.afcmma.com) that will result in the formation of a new PrimEdge subsidiary to organize, conduct, promote, and film the AFC mixed martial arts events featuring internationally known fighters. These events will be scheduled starting in late 2007 at the major venues in select cities across the U.S. PrimEdge's new subsidiary will hold exclusive distribution rights for broadcast and media distribution, including DVDs, of the events. Source: Market Wire, 9th April 2007


MORE NEWS

Elsewhere/Rights: Rugby Highlights Row Kicks Off

A legal row has erupted over online use of rubgy league footage that could restrict newspaper websites' use of video clips from major sporting events. Australian telecoms company Telstra, which has a $90m Aus (£38m) six-year rights agreement with the National Rugby League, wants to stop pay TV channel Fox Sports using two minutes of highlights footage on its website and via mobile phone.

Telstra is pursuing a full trial in federal court and argues that Fox Sports, jointly owned by News Corporation and Publishing & Broadcasting Limited, is breaking the concept of "fair use" and therefore breaching copyright laws. The company is seeking a court order stating that no more than 45 seconds of footage from each match can be shown and that clips can only be available for 24 hours from the end of a match.

The legal battle threatens to set a precedent that could be adopted by other sports governing bodies and severely harm the digital ambitions of newspaper publishers. Currently newspapers use the concept of "fair use" to run up to two minutes of licensed audio and video coverage without fear of breaching copyright laws.

In many countries the concept is covered within copyright act provisions, but it has been largely a gentleman's agreement when applied to newspapers' digital sports coverage. A number of other sports governing bodies have tried to tighten their control over digital content. The World Association of Newspapers is at loggerheads with the International Rugby Board over new media restrictions for this year's Rugby World Cup that the WAN says is "a serious breach of freedom of the press".

The International Cricket Council's media accreditation rules for the current Cricket World Cup potentially threatened to stop newspapers offering popular online over-by-over coverage, using the threat of a withdrawal of press accreditation rights. Source: Guardian Unlimited, 5th April 2007

Elsewhere/Programming: ESPN, Mark Burnett, DreamWorks team up for 'Contender'

Encouraged by the success of their boxing based reality show The Contender US sports broadcaster ESPN, Mark Burnett Productions, and DreamWorks Television will produce a six-episode boxing tournament featuring a team of fighters from both seasons of the show. They will face a team of fighters from the UK. The team winning the majority of the eight-round bouts of the inaugural tournament will be presented with the Sugar Ray Leonard Cup.

As The Contender’s host and mentor during both its ESPN and NBC runs, the US team will be led by Sugar Ray Leonard, the six-time world boxing champion. Team UK will be promoted by boxing promoter, Frank Warren, and captained by former World Boxing Association (WBA) champion Barry McGuigan.

The parties state that due to the success of The Contender Challenge now offers a format that extends the fans’ relationship with the fighters to see how they stack up against international competition. Source: Indian Television, 9th April 2007


ARTICLES, COMMENTS & OPINIONS

Setanta's Entry into Big League a Massive Gamble

Were it not for the truly atrocious nature of the current England football squad's performance and the turgid boredom engendered by most of the FA Cup fixtures, it might be possible to feel thrilled for ITV and Setanta in capturing rights to FA Cup games and England friendlies from the BBC and Sky TV.

As it is, the £425m four-year deal looks like a ripping bit of loss-leadership for ITV and a daring double-or-quits calculation for Setanta. The burning question of "have ITV and Setanta overpaid?" would seem to invite an obvious answer - the last set of rights went for £300m, and, factoring inflation in, this sum would now be all of £320m.

Given that there is no current indication of double-digit growth in television advertising rates - quite the contrary - that subscription television charges are at best flat, and that television audiences are also trended downwards, then the deal looks like terrible value from a return-on-investment point of view.

But the tactical issues here are much greater than a piffling profit-and-loss consideration. For ITV there are a number of factors. Firstly, it gives the channel more event-viewing, and it has to be assumed that this is the linchpin of the ITV revival strategy. Secondly, it denudes the BBC of any live football, but this is hardly a significant achievement. Thirdly, it is a signal to advertisers about the channel's intent to invest. I did wonder briefly whether this had been a coup of Charles Allen (boo, hiss), rather than the more charismatic Michael Grade (hurrah), the headlines might have been far more sceptical.

The last time ITV paid a huge amount for football rights, it was the utterly lamentable ITV Digital episode when a second-rate offering of non-Premiership football sank a wobbly pay-TV platform and almost took half a division of football clubs with it. However, now with added Grade, this parallel does not seem to be suggesting itself as readily as it might.

Talking of such matters, what are we to make of Setanta? The ambitious Irish sports rights business is now into live football rights to the tune of more than £500m. Its goal is to establish a lower-cost pay-TV option, teaming up with the Freeview/Top Up TV offering. The theory here is an interesting one: offer the poorer football viewer a viable alternative to Sky, on fewer games, a more reasonable cost basis.

The problem with this approach is that an "alternative" to Sky is in fact an "enemy" of Sky. Setanta has riled the many-headed beast of Osterley and not many have managed that and survived. To monetise its investment in live football Setanta is hoping for a million sign-ups for £14 a month - which means a three-year stretch before becoming profitable.

One immediate problem for Setanta is getting the right kind of set-top boxes manufactured to meet this demand. The plans by Sky to launch its own Freeview paybox has upset potential brown goods dealers everywhere, who don't like the idea of retailing such a confusing consumer proposition. And even though it is still fictitious, the very threat of it makes for enough confusion to make Setanta's path to market pretty difficult.

But the common enemy here is not Sky, or even the BBC, but viewer apathy. This is where Michael Grade is on safer ground; however dismal the game, live football always scores relatively well in a schedule. For Setanta the viewer has to make an active purchase decision for football-rights-that-are-exclusive-but-there-is-more-the-same-somewhere-else.

Setanta has done well at picking up rights around the edges of the main events - European and Scottish and Irish football rights - but the mad, mad, mad world of over-valued English football is an altogether different league. Source: Emily Bell Opines on Guardian Unlimited, 2nd April 2007