Wednesday, 23rd May 2007

HEADLINE OF THE DAY

English FA Prepares to Launch International Rights Tender

The Football Association, English soccer’s governing body, is launching the tender process for the international rights to the FA Cup, the country’s top knockout competition, and England’s home matches. The FA is seeking interest now from broadcasters, agencies and specialist media operations, including mobile phone and IPTV networks, before tender documents are issued in June.

The rights cover a four-year period, beginning with the 2008-09 season, and include the FA Cup, 28 England matches, approximately 20 England Under-21 matches, and the FA Community Shield, the traditional ‘curtain-raiser’ to the English season. A domestic deal worth £425 million ($837 million) has already been agreed with commercial broadcaster ITV and pay-television operator Setanta. Saturday’s FA Cup final was televised in more than 160 territories and had a global audience of more than £500 million. Source: Sportcal, 22nd May 2007


WHAT’S THE BUZZ?

Life's a Beach for Longoria and Soap Hunk

Eva Longoria had some fun in the sun spending a day at the beach with soap hunk Adrian Bellani. Fortunately, Longoria's pro basketball player fiancé Tony Parker—who was busy playing in the NBA Western Conference finals—has nothing to worry about. Longoria and Bellani co-hosted the AVP Toyota Open volleyball tournament in Hermosa Beach, California, yesterday to support Padres Contra El Cáncer, an organization for Latino children with cancer.

Longoria has been the face of the charity for two years now, and she definitely raised awareness yesterday when she played in the tournament in a skimpy white bikini. Bellani was quite impressed with Longoria. Her playing skills, that is. Source: Female First UK, 22nd May 2007


SPORTS SHORTS

* Four-time MLS champion D.C. United will play in the Copa Sudamericana, a prestigious South American club tournament this fall. United was invited to the event after a third-place finish in the CONCACAF Champions' Cup this year. D.C. United was the first team from Major League Soccer to participate in the tournament when it was invited to play in the 2005 edition. United won the MLS Cup in 1996, '97, '99 and 2004. Source: WTOP News, 21st May 2007

* Saralee Thungthong-kam and Sudket Prapakamol made Thai badminton history last Thursday when they became the Kingdom's first mixed doubles pair to top the Badminton World Federation's rankings. Sudket and Saralee were previously ranked 2nd, took top spot after top pair, Nova Widianto and Lylyana Natsir of Indonesia, suffered an early exit at the Indonesia Open Super Series. The Thai duo reached the second round. In the men's singles, Boonsak Ponsana, who recently captured the Singapore Open Super Series title, is ranked eighth. Source: The Nation, 22nd May 2007

* Malaysian national doubles coach, Rexy Mainaky, wants his charges who have qualified for the World Championships to break into the top four in order to avoid meeting each other in the preliminary rounds of the Aug 13-19 tournament. Rexy is mindful of the last few tournaments where Malaysia’s men’s doubles have played as early as the first round, said they must aim to be ranked in the top four if they wish to do well in the World Championships in Kuala Lumpur. Source: The New Straits Times, 23rd May 2007

* The BCCI has blamed Doordarshan for the failure to provide coverage of the ongoing test series in Bangladesh. Coverage of the series is limited to Neo Sports, the pay channel of Nimbus Communications, but the BCCI said it was not obliged to intervene. It pointed out that DD had been showing the one-day series between Pakistan and Sri Lanka and could not understand why the Bangladesh-India series was not also available. The first of the two test matches in Chittagong has been affected by rain and finished in a draw today. Source: Sportcal, Television Point, 22nd May 2007

* Showtime Arabia’s support for its Arabic and English coverage of English Premier League football will involve two studios and supporting control rooms, currently being built for the project, with a host of pundits and presenters being lined up to provide previews, reviews, live reporting and analysis on the pay-TV network in the Middle-East and North Africa. Showtime Arabia will cover the Premier League for the next three years. Ali Alawieh will be the main presenter in Showtime's Arabic commentary studio. Source: Sports Media, 22nd May 2007

* Two top English football powerbrokers arrive in Malaysia this week to resolve a row over Manchester United's planned Asian tour. Premier League chairman Sir Dave Richards and Manchester United chief executive David Gill will meet AFC president Mohamed bin Hammam on Wednesday, AFC officials said. bin Hammam reiterated on Tuesday his position that United, or any other club, cannot play in countries hosting Asian Cup matches while the tournament is on. Source: Channel News Asia, 23rd May 2007

* A pilot project in India for providing television on mobile phones is being launched by Doordarshan, although trial runs have been on-going since February. The service will initially be free to air and the channels available on the Digital Video Broadcasting Handheld mode will be: DD 1, DD News, DD Bharati, DD Sports, DD Urdu, DD Bangla and DD Podhigai. Source: Indian Television, 23rd May 2007

* Pakistan’s Super Hockey League has been dropped by its federation after three years due to a lack of adequate venues and sponsor interest. The initiative was launched in 2005 and league officials are still hopeful they can revive the competition next year. PHF secretary Khalid Mehmood said that this year’s tournament could not go ahead because installation of floodlights at the national stadium in Lahore has been delayed. The Super Hockey League was launched intending to make hockey more lucrative for players and attractive to spectators. Source: Sportcal, 22nd May 2007

* Siam Sport is attempting to stabilise finances of the daily sports newspaper, which has struggled with a drop in advertising revenues and forced to look closely at its own editorial content. Ad-spend in the papers in the first four months of 2007 dropped by 7.8%, according to Nielsen. The paper recently reduced the number of pages to 32 and reduced copies printed during the week whilst increasing the number for the weekend to cut overall production costs. Last month, Siam Sport launched Thailand’s first 24-hour local sports channel on satellite TV. Source: Sports Media, 22nd May 2007

* MGM Domestic Television Distribution secured a fall syndication launch for its half-hour comedy series Sports Action Team. Last season SAT aired on NBC. The second season will premiere on HDNet this fall and will also be available for syndication. Created by Towers Productions, the 17 x 30-min SAT is a semi-scripted series that follows antics of a hapless sports reporters who cover the national sports beat. Each week, the team interacts with athletes, managers, sports enthusiasts and celebrities including Conan O’Brien, Don King and more. Source: Worldscreen, 22nd May 2007

* EM.TV is repositioning itself to focus on sports business and is looking for a buyer for its children’s and youth content divisions. No timetable has been given for the sale. The announcement came as EM.TV released Q1 2007 results. The sports segment —DSF, PLAZAMEDIA-Group and Sport 1 —delivered an 18.7% revenue increase to €54.7 million, with profit of €7.3 million. Without the entertainment segments, EM.TV is targeting 2007 revenues of €215 million; with the children and youth divisions included, the target was €250 million. Source: Worldscreen, Bloomberg, Hollywood Reporter, 22nd May 2007

* Chinese fans have been brought closer to European football with UEFA's launch of a Mandarin-language version of uefa.com. The website is produced by UEFA Media Technologies with major Chinese portal, sina.com. In addressing growing demand and popularity of football in Asia, the move makes uefa.com the football website with the widest reach. This comes after the UEFA Champions League boasted its first Chinese player with international defender Sun Xiang representing PSV Eindhoven. The site can be accessed at http://cn.uefa.com. Source: UEFA Official, China Daily, 22nd May 2007

* Mobile TV provider, Yamgo, announced a global cross-platform mobile video sharing service and the world's first free-to-view mobile TV network. The service enables Yamgo customers to create mobile video pages to upload and share videos from their mobile handsets or via www.yamgo.tv; apart from to ad-funded channels and user-generated content, Yamgo will make available premium video including live broadcasts, mobisodes and downloads distributed on time-based subscriptions, pay-per-view, or pay-per-download basis. Yamgo is currently trialing the service in 25 countries. Source: Fierce Mobile Content, 22nd May 2007

* Sussex County Cricket Club announced that its video site, Sussex TV, will be available for free in 2007. Registering at www.succexcricket.co.uk will give access to exclusive dressing room footage and an archive of memorable cricket moments. “It has been a real pleasure to see many visitors from countries like Thailand, the USA, Australia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. With Sussex TV free we hope to make our club even more accessible to both fans of Sussex and cricket fans in general,” said the club in a press release. Source: Sports Media, 22nd May 2007


MORE NEWS

India/Broadcaster: Ten Sports Exploring New Revenue Options

Taj Television-owned Ten Sports channel is exploring alternative revenue options from platforms such as mobile telephony and gaming. While the bulk of its revenues would continue to come from ad and distribution, the sports channel is planning to expand its sources of revenue. Newly appointed General Manager of the channel, Mr Rukin Kizilblash, said, "We are looking at different options to generate revenues and are open to all sorts of ideas. Bagging mobile rights and gaming could be some of the other sources of generating revenues for the channel.''

Kizilbash says, "We still have more than 50 per cent share among sports channels and the purpose is to hold on to it.'' The channel is also putting up a new show - `Sports Night' to showcase sporting events around the world and half hour capsule. Trying to lure audiences away from cricket, Ten Sports expects to drive audiences to sports such as wrestling and tennis. Mr Kizilbash says, "We will continue to delight the channel's millions of viewers with sporting events like the WWP championships and the US Open tennis matches.''

Early this year, the Essel Group's Zee TV picked up a 50 per cent stake in the channel. "Zee has picked up a 50 per cent stake and would be increasing it over the next two years. However, the management of the two companies is still unchanged. We are figuring out how we will differentiate the content between the two channels, '' says Mr Kizilbash. Ten Sports currently owns the exclusive rights for the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), the UEFA Champions League, the US Open tennis and Hockey's World Cup. Source: Business Line India, 23rd May 2007

Australia/Rights: Fox Sports Unveils Asian Cup Scheduling

Fox Sports Australia has announced it will broadcast every football match at the Asian Cup in July. FS will cover 24 matches in the group stages, the four quarter-finals, the two semi-finals, the third/fourth place play-off and the final. FS will cover a total of 28 matches, with the other four on immediate replay due to conflicting kick off times on the last two days of the group stage. Every match involving Australia will be carried live. Most of the matches will take place at prime time in Australia.

Fox Sports will supply English commentary to an expected worldwide audience of 200 million people, through ESPN Star Asia, Eurosport and LBC. Andy Harper will host pre-match and post-match analysis from a studio in Sydney, which will move to Kuala Lumpur towards the end of the tournament. The competition will kick-off on July 7 and conclude on July 29 with Australia’s playing its opening match against Oman on July 8. Source: Sports Media, 22nd May 2007

Global/Rights: ICC to Lose as TV Deal Fades

The International Cricket Council's billion dollar TV deal with ESPN Star Sports is in danger of collapsing. Industry experts claim that ESS has yet to sign a contract with the ICC, believing it to be unsustainable following regulatory changes in India. This would be a blow for the game's governing body and its 10 Test-playing countries which would expect tens of millions of dollars over the life of the agreement. The crisis again highlights the economic hold India has over cricket globally.

The ICC announced in December that it had sold rights to 18 events over the next eight years, beginning with the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa in September, to ESS for an undisclosed sum believed to be $US1.1billion ($1.4bn). It also includes the 2011 and 2015 World Cups and at least three Champions Trophies. ESS planned to show the events in Asia and on-sell them to broadcasters in other parts of the world.

However, Harish Thawani, head of rival company, Nimbus Communications, which paid an amazing $US612 million for the rights to cricket in India, said there had been dramatic changes in India, where broadcast rights were now worth substantially less. India generates most of the game's wealth through television rights and sponsorship.

India's early exit from the recent World Cup cost broadcasters millions and raised concerns it could happen again at future big events costing even more. ESS paid twice as much as the previous seven-year ICC deal for the rights. The value of rights has also been diminished by government insistence that cricket must also be shown by state broadcaster Doordarshan - greatly expanding the audience but robbing cashed up cable operators of exclusivity.

However, Thawani claimed the biggest restriction had been the Government's popularist capping of the sale of subscription television channels to just US12 cents, of which the broadcaster gets just US5c. Because of the regulatory changes in India, Thawani's Nimbus is in the process of negotiating compensation from the Board of Control for Cricket in India which will run to many millions of dollars

ESS is jointly owned by News Corporation and Walt Disney Co. An ESPN Star Sports spokesman in Singapore played down any concerns. "We're not renegotiating with the ICC. We're pretty happy," the spokesman said. The ICC has also denied any approach by ESPN Star Sports to re-negotiate their existing agreement. Source: Fox Sport Australia, 23rd May 2007