Thursday, 15th November 2007

SPORTS SHORTS

* The International Olympic Committee has announced an agreement with Television New Zealand (TVNZ) for the internet and mobile platform exhibition rights within New Zealand for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. The IOC selected TVNZ on their capacity to guarantee full exploitation of the broadcast rights over a variety of platforms and their commitment to promoting the Olympic Games and the values of the Olympic Movement. The IOC’s over-the-air broadcast partner through to Beijing 2008 is also TVNZ. Source: Sports e-Media, Sportcal, 14th Nov 2007

* NHK, Japan’s public-service broadcaster, has agreed a three-year deal with Sportfive to show weekly coverage of English soccer’s top-tier Barclays Premier League. The deal supplements existing live coverage of the league in Japan on J Sports, the cable and satellite sports broadcaster. Sportfive has worked with the Premier League to carve out free-to-air packages in Japan and has already signed deals with terrestrial networks Fuji TV, TBS, Nippon TV and TV Asahi. However, the lion’s share of the broadcast rights remain with J Sports, which eventually agreed a three-year deal with Sportfive as the 2007-08 Premier League season kicked off. Source: Sportcal, 14th Nov 2007

* China will have a whopping 84 million digital-cable subscribers by 2010, according to new figures from research outfit Media Partners Asia (MPA). In its most recent journal, MPA says that by 2010, almost half of China’s cable TV subscription base will have been converted to digital – a government priority. Those subscribers will help revenues to reach RMB26.4 billion (US$3.6 billion) with RMB6.5 billion of that coming from digital pay-TV and “related value-added services”. By the end of this year, the Chinese digital cable TV market will generate RMB5.8 billion in subscription revenues with RMB1.1 billion accruing from digital pay-TV services. Source: Rapid TV News, 14th Nov 2007

* Singapore has been included as a stopover on sailing’s round-the-world Volvo Ocean Race for the first time. India and China will also be involved in the organisation of the 2008-09 event. Singapore will be the fifth stop in the race, which starts in the Spanish city of Alicante in October of next year and ends in St Petersburg, Russia in July 2009. While the main action will take place on the open sea, spectators will be able to enjoy a range of activities on land. The race is expected to attract over a billion television viewers, raising Singapore's profile in the world of sports. From Singapore, the race heads to Qingdao in China, with the boats scheduled to arrive on February 21. Source: Sportcal, 14th Nov 2007

* Austrian public-service broadcaster, ORF is set to cut its budget for 2008 by up to €30 million ($44 million) after investing in sports rights and failing to achieve advertising targets. Having signed a deal for soccer’s 2008 European Championships, worth between €8.5 million and €10 million, and secured rights for the 2008 Olympics, ORF has been forced to make cuts, most noticeably in programming. There are also concerns that companies may not be willing to advertise during the 2008 Olympics because of the unfavourable time difference. Source: Sportcal, 14th Nov 2007

* The Rugby Football League has said that it will only increase the number of teams in the top-tier Super League if there is a considerable rise in television revenue in the next rights deal. Plans are afoot to add two teams to the Super League, taking the number to 14, in 2009. However, this is conditional on the RFL receiving a better offer than the current £9 million ($18.7 million) –a-year deal with pay-television operator BSkyB, which expires at the end of the 2008 season. BSkyB’s rival Setanta, which now shows Australian rugby league, is expected to compete for the contract. Source: Sportcal, 14th Nov 2007

* German pay-television broadcaster, Premiere, is hoping that two new studies into audience figures for the German Bundesliga will convince sponsors of the worth of pay-television coverage and later free-to-air highlights. The broadcaster has presented a study carried out by Sport+Markt, which found that fans who watched Premiere coverage could remember the names of more shirt sponsors than those fans who watched Sportschau, the free-to-air highlights programme broadcast on Saturdays at 6.30pm by public-service network ARD. In addition, it found that 41% of Sportschau’s followers could not name a single shirt sponsor. Meanwhile, a survey conducted by IFM found that the number of children between the ages of 3 and 13 watching Sportschau would fall by 23% if the programme is delayed until 10pm. Source: Sportcal, 14th Nov 2007

* The International Fight League agreed a deal with YouTube to provide and share short form content. The deal is the first partnership YouTube has formed in the sport of mixed martial arts, and follows the path of similar partnerships with the NBA, NHL, CBS and EA Sports among others. The partnership will provide IFL content to websites around the globe that use Google AdSense and YouTube players. The partnership includes working with Google and YouTube in a revenue sharing model that would allow IFL to generate income from advertisements shown in conjunction with its videos. The videos will be available on YouTube as well as other Google AdSense partner sites that cover the sport. Source: Sport Business, 14th Nov 2007


MORE NEWS

China/Rights: Sohu Acquires Online Rights of Premier League Clubs

Chinese internet portal Sohu has acquired the broadband rights for 16 clubs in English soccer's top-tier Premier League. The deal was agreed through its partner PremierGoals, which has an agreement with 75 per cent of Premier League clubs for the distribution of match footage and pictures in China. The deal is effective immediately and will run until the end of the 2009-10 season, although financial terms were not disclosed.

The site, premiergoals.com, will be produced by Sohu and the free match highlights and delayed coverage will also be available on the portal's sports channel and mobile phones. The 16 clubs covered are: Aston Villa, Birmingham, Blackburn, Bolton, Derby, Everton, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester City, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Reading, Tottenham, West Ham and Wigan. It is estimated that there are at least 30 million Premier League fans in mainland China, while Sohu averages around 300 million page views and 40 million unique visitors per day.

Manchester City manager Sven-Goran Eriksson attended the launch ceremony for the new service, where it was announced that the club is likely to tour China in May or June of next year. Ao Ming, director of Sohu sports channel, said: ‘It's a long-term investment, and we believe the copyright and exclusive videos can help us gain more users for Sohu as a whole, and eventually pay back in terms of advertisement spending from our customers who recognize our website's value.’ Source: Sportcal, 14th Nov 2007

Elsewhere/Rights: Ambitious GTV Swoops for More English and African Soccer Rights

GTV, the ambitious five-month-old pan-African pay-television operator, has expanded its portfolio with the acquisition of rights to more soccer matches in England and via a record sponsorship and rights deal with the Council for East and Central Africa Football Association. It was announced today that GTV, which is now active in 10 countries and will soon expand to 14, has secured the rights to England’s home matches and the FA Cup knockout competition in 44 nations in sub-Saharan Africa for four years, beginning with the 2008-09 season.

The new deal with England’s Football Association will complement this offering as GTV bids to establish itself as the top broadcaster of African and other soccer across the continent. The fledgling operation also has selected rights to Italy’s top-tier Serie A league and is offering a first-ever television platform for the leagues in Uganda and Tanzania, agreeing to show six live games, plus highlights of others, over the course of the season.

The deal with CECAFA is worth $6 million and runs until 2011, providing GTV with exclusive rights to broadcast all CECAFA tournaments, beginning with the CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup, scheduled to take place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on December 8 to 22. GTV is understood to have beaten off interest from Multichoice in bidding for the rights. The sponsorship will inject $500,000 into the Senior Challenge Cup, enabling organisers to transport teams to the competition and offer total prize money of $60,000. The sponsorship deal follows the expiry of a three-year, $600,000 sponsorship deal with Saudi Arabian tycoon Sheikh Muhammed Al Amoudi. The members of CECAFA are Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Zanzibar, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi and Djibouti.

When the Premier League kicked off in August, there was criticism of GTV’s limited reach, with coverage available in only five countries: Botswana, Kenya, Mauritius, Tanzania and Uganda. However, since then it has added Ghana, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda and Zambia to the list and exceeded its initial subscriber target of 20,000. The FA claims to have secured £145 million ($300 million) from international deals covering the period from 2008 to 2012. This is a 275-per-cent increase on the a £38.5 million generated last time round. The income is in addition to the £425 million from a domestic tie-up with UK free-to-air broadcaster ITV and pay-television operator Setanta, a 42-per-cent increase on the present deal with rivals the BBC and BSkyB. Source: Sportcal, 14th Nov 2007

Elsewhere/Rights: LFP Considers Sunday Evening Ligue 1 Highlights

The LFP, the French professional soccer league, is said to be considering moving free-to-air league highlights to 5pm on Sundays as it prepares the tender for the 2008-09 to 2011-12 seasons. The league is reported to have divided the rights into around 12 lots or packages, compared to seven for the previous tender, and has explored the possibility of rescheduling the highlights, currently shown by public-service broadcaster France Télévisions on Sunday lunchtimes.

France Télévisions acquired the highlights rights for the 2007-08 season at a cost of around €25 million ($36.7 million), and its new 'France 2 Foot' show televises match action previously available on Téléfoot, the highlights programme of commercial network TF1. The time change may find favour with France Télévisions, should it retain the rights, as it would be able to generate more money from advertising and schedule 'France 2 Foot' before 'Stade 2,' its sports news programme.

'France 2 Foot' has struggled to match the viewership of 'Téléfoot,' which has reinvented itself as ‘the magazine show for international football' after the loss of the Ligue 1 highlights. Free-to-air Ligue 1 highlights have traditionally failed to pull in large viewing figures, with fans often preferring to watch ‘Jour de Foot,’ the Saturday-evening highlights show offered by Canal Plus, the French pay-television broadcaster. One of the other lots to be made available to French broadcasters is for delayed match coverage, a package the league has tried to make more attractive by delaying the clubs’ right to exploit the match replays by 24 hours until midnight on Sunday-Monday.

Meanwhile, Canal Plus, the incumbent live rights holder, has been warned that its subscriber base will fall by at least a quarter if it fails to retain the Ligue 1 contract. The broadcaster currently pays €600 million-a-year for the rights and has constantly warned that it is not willing to match that fee in a new deal beyond 2008-09. Source: Sportcal, 14th Nov 2007