Tuesday, 5th August 2008

DATA BOX

HDTV Market Forecast to Reach 255mn Homes by 2013
Study by IMS Research published on IPTV-News.com, 4th August 2008

There were estimated 45mn households worldwide receiving high-definition TV services via DTH, cable, IPTV and DTT at the end of last year, and this market is forecast to grow to 255mn by the end of 2013, according to a new study by IMS Research. Shane Walker, research analyst and author of the study, said "HD DTH households are forecast to grow on average at 27.5% annually, reaching 97 million households at the end of 2013. The most significant service uptake is expected prior to 2010, after which time the HDTV household growth rate is expected to fall below 30% annually.” IMS Research also states that it expects the Blu-ray disc market to experience strong growth over the next five years, particularly as Blu-ray drives in new PCs become more common, reaching a predicted US $46bn in revenues in 2013.

Chinese Telcos Receiving Record IPTV Subscriptions Ahead of Olympics
Report by Shanghai Morning Post published on IPTV-News.com, 4th August 2008

Chinese telcos are receiving a record number of new subscribers to their IPTV services each day ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games next week, say reports in the Shanghai Morning Post. China Telecom is estimated to be receiving around 3,000 applications for IPTV services each day, thanks in part to a replay function that allows users to revisit programmes aired within the past 48 hours. Shanghai Telecom has also said that it will promote a new service during the Olympics that will enable viewers to watch different sporting events on different windows in the same screen.


SPORTS SHORTS

* A high-level meeting will take place this week between the International Olympic Committee and the United States Olympic Committee to resolve a dispute over USOC’s share of commercial revenues from the Olympic Games. USOC will receive an estimated $300 to $350 million of the sponsorship and television rights revenues from the Beijing Olympics, which is believed to almost equal the combined revenues of all other national Olympic committees. The present revenue distribution system is a legacy of the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, when the USOC was credited with helping bail out the IOC financially. Ever since then it has benefited from a significant share of the IOC’s Olympic revenue. Sportcal, 4th Aug 2008

* MasterCard predicts retail sales across Asia-Pacific will continue to grow in the second half of 2008 despite global economic gloom. In the credit card firm’s Index of Retail report, China led the way for growth at 18% as retail sales are expected to hit 5.5 billion yuan (US$805 million) largely due to the Beijing Olympic Games, while Hong Kong registered 12.7% growth. Others with strong growth include Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, with year-on-year growth expected to reach 12%, 9.3% and 8.6%, respectively. Markets less bullish include Taiwan, New Zealand and Japan, with growth limited to just 2.9%, 2.5% and 1% respectively. Brand Rep. Asia, 4th Aug 2008

* The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will launch an online Channel to broadcast the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in 77 territories across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, including India, Republic of Korea, Nigeria and Indonesia from 6th August 2008. The IOC will broadcast a selection of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games clips as Video on Demand (VOD). The IOC’s Channel will be available on YouTube, geo-blocked within each territory. Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), a wholly owned subsidiary of the IOC, will produce regularly updated Olympic content. The package will include highlights, news and daily clips of the competitions, available throughout the 17-day period of the Games. Advanced-Television, 5th August 2008

* International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge was accused of backtracking on promises of press freedom Saturday and some internet sites remained blocked less than a week before the Beijing Games begin. Under pressure from the IOC, Chinese organizers unblocked some sites at the main press center and venues, but others remained censored for journalists covering the Summer Games. "Let me be very clear on this," said Rogge, speaking publicly for the first time since arriving in Beijing on Thursday. "We require that different media have the fullest access possible to report on the Olympic Games. And I'm adamant in saying there has been no deal whatsoever to accept restrictions. Our requirements are the same from host city to host city and remain unchanged since the IOC entered into a host city contract with Beijing in 2001." Telecomasia.net, 5th August 2008

* Amid weather forecast of heavy rains and thunderstorm on August 8, Beijing is praying to the Rain Gods not to play a spoilsport on the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics this Friday. Deputy Director of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, Wang Jianjie reportedly told media persons last evening in Beijing that contingency plans have been made to reduce, delay or even bring forward the rainfall before it reaches Beijing's National Stadium, where the ceremony is slated to be held. Beijing has prepared cannons to either disperse rains for important activities or produce artificial rains to reduce temperatures when there are enough clouds, reported the China Daily. News.WebIndia123.com, 4th August 2008

* Samsung Anycall has partnered with OOH outfit JM Network to launch the Samsung Olympic sports channel at commonspace located in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Samsung has decided to take advantage of the interactive pop up store that commonspace offers to maximise its audience reach with a special focus on the Olympic theme. Apart from featuring the latest Olympic news at commonspace that would include live broadcast of selected Olympic competitions and the opening and closing ceremony on two mega LED TVs, the latest Olympic-themed TVC for Samsung Touchwiz F488 is also screened. Marketing-Interactive, 5th August 2008

* Hundreds of sports fans from around the world appear to have been cheated, giving credit card and passport details, and possibly spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for what they believed were genuine Olympic tickets. The fraud scheme has reportedly affected Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, Britons and others. Victims are said to include family members of the Australian football team competing at the Olympics. The BeijingTicketing.com website was offering tickets for Friday's Olympic opening ceremony for $1,750 and $2,150 Monday, calling the prices "very competitive." News.WebIndia123.com, 4th August 2008

* The Korean channel Arirang TV will become available to StarHub Digital Cable customers as a complimentary service starting September 1. All customers who are using a digital set-top box, a high-definition set-top box or HubStation will receive the channel. Arirang TV was first launched on StarHub Digital Cable in May 2004 and is currently being offered as a specialty channel for a monthly subscription. Worldscreen, 4th Aug 2008

* News Corp plans to invest $100 million to launch six regional television channels in India, Chairman Rupert Murdoch has confirmed, underscoring his commitment to one of the world's fastest-growing media markets. "I'm guessing the investments will be in the region of $100 million, and we will launch the channels within 12 months," Murdoch told reporters. "All these channels will be under the STAR brand." Advanced-Television, Rapid TV News, 5th August 2008

* Korea's Communications Commission has announced that in conjunction with the National Information Society Agency it has selected three Korean telcos to develop a pilot project for the convergence of broadcasting and telecommunications, including the delivery of IPTV as a public service. The selected consortium, formed from KT Consortium, Hanaro Consortium and LG Dacom Consortium, plans to offer content from public and private firms and will start the pilot service for 600 households this December. IPTV-News.com, 4th August 2008

* Online broadcaster, Freecaster.tv, has agreed a deal with FIM Motocross World Championship promoter, YouthStream, to broadcast live and delayed coverage of the series from 2009. Under the deal, coverage of the FIM Motocross and SuperMoto World Championships will become the first major sports to be broadcast live and delayed online for free. The FIM Women’s Motocross World Championship, the MX3 and Snowcross World series, the Veterans’ World Cup and the FIM Off Road Awards will also be aired on Freecaster.tv. Sport Business, 4th Aug 2008

* The Spanish and English-language soccer channel GolTV has been removed from the DISH Network lineup, after the satellite platform and pay-TV network were unable to come to terms on a new contract. GolTV says that DISH pulled the plug on Friday, August 1. The football channel maintains that the platform was attempting to “impose unreasonable contract demands and terms on the independent and privately-owned minority network.” The move comes amid live coverage of the Emirates Cup and ahead of 2010 World Cup Qualifiers and the kick-offs for the La Liga and Bundesliga seasons. World Screen, 4th August 2008


MORE NEWS

Singapore/Broadcast: CASBAA’s Letter to the Editor of Today

The column dated July 26th carried in your Weekend Today edition jumps on an example of higher prices for football content to criticize competition in the pay-TV industry as costing consumers “more and more.” There are a number of distortions in the column that deserve correction.

With regard to sports, the “anti-siphoning” rules pertaining to sports content in both the UK and Australia are cited as examples of desirable regulatory practice. But these are not designed to influence pay-TV prices. They are designed to ensure access to events of significant national interest on free-to-air television. Like all regulatory interventions, they have negative as well as positive effects.

* The UK list for football includes only the World Cup, European Cup, FA Cup and Scottish FA Cup knock-out championships. It does not include the league games, in either the Premier League or the Champions League, which seem to be the focus of the author’s concern. As the author notes, the European Union has required Premier League games to be divided among two separate pay-TV operators and thus an English fan who wishes to see all games must now subscribe to two pay-TV systems.

* The Australian “anti-siphoning” list is considerably longer, and has been much criticized in that country because it reserves so much sporting content to free-to air broadcasters with limited channel capacity that they do not use it all, leaving audiences with no access to some content, a plain failure of policy.

* Singapore already has its own anti-siphoning list. It focuses on events like the Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games that have been regarded as essential to Singaporeans.

* The article also makes reference to Italy, but again it is important to understand the reason why particular regulatory steps have been taken. Measures were introduced in regard to Italian football rights following the merger of the Italian pay TV operators Newscorp and Telepiu. However, the article overlooks the fact that these measures were primarily put in place to protect the Italian football clubs from a merged pay-TV operator, not to guarantee viewing rights for Italian football fans. So the steps taken in Italy are not relevant to Singapore.

Pay-TV operators seek to provide value to consumers in a highly competitive marketplace by delivering to the consumer the content they want at the time they want for a price they are willing to pay. In this effort, they compete with a multitude of other means of delivery, from free-TV, to DVDs to websites to mobile TV on portable terminals. Of course, sporting events are by no means the only type of television that pay-TV offers, and there is no shortage of content in international markets – and no reason to fear a bidding war. In the last year alone, more than two dozen new channels have arrived in the Asian market, delivering all kinds of content to meet the demands of a wide range of consumers.

Indeed, the recent announcement by SingTel and the Hollywood studios of a new video-on-demand offering shows the beneficial effects of competition – it has produced a new service offering tailored, high quality content to consumers at unprecedented speed.
According to reports in the press, StarHub will soon announce its own competitive offering. Consumers are getting access to the content they want faster than ever.

In fact consumers enjoy a far greater range of television content options today than at any point in history, and competitive forces are going to continue to increase those options – as long as the government stays its regulatory hand. Prices are undeniably higher – but the column fails to note that they are higher (especially for sports) everywhere in the world and there is nothing the Singapore regulator can do to affect global market trends. But the point to note is that the value equation – what consumers get for their pay-TV money – is better today than it has ever been. (Signed by Simon Twiston Davies, CEO of CASBAA) CASBAA Official, 29th Jul 2008

Malaysia/General: FA Bans Overseas Players

The Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) has announced that foreign players will be barred from both the Malaysia Super League and Malaysia Premier League next year for an indefinite period. FAM deputy president Khairy Jamaluddin announced the new ruling after the association’s council meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, revealing that it had received unanimous support from the FAM's 16 affiliates. “This decree is indefinite and it will be enforced in the new season in January 2009,” he said. “It may be seen as a backtrack measure but we have to bear in mind that this is the only way to raise our football standard.”

The move marks the second time in a decade that foreign players have been banned from the Malaysian league. The first ban, introduced in 1999 as a result of the Asian financial crisis, was revoked three years ago. However, Khairy felt that the return of imported players has not led to an improvement in the quality of the league. “After years of allowing import players to play in our leagues, they did not improve our football standard at all,” he said. “Furthermore, some of them did not have any quality.”

In addition to the ban on foreign players, all 28 clubs in the two leagues will be required to field an under-20 player in their starting line-up next season. The FAM’s move comes as FIFA president Sepp Blatter continues to step up his campaign for a “6+5” rule, whereby six players in a team are eligible to play for the national team of the country of the club. The Sport Briefing, 3rd Aug 2008

Elsewhere/Rights: Bids Due This Week for Serie A Highlights Rights

Broadcasters interested in acquiring a variety of domestic Italian club soccer rights, including highlights of the top-tier Serie A, have until Wednesday to reply to the tender issued by the Lega Nazionale Professionisti, Italy’s professional soccer league.

The LNP has made six different rights packages available for the next two seasons, comprising free-to-air highlights rights for Serie A and the second-tier Serie B, live rights to Serie B, radio rights for the top two divisions, live radio and television rights for the Coppa Italia, the top knockout competition, and the radio and television rights to the Italian Super Cup, the annual match played between the Serie A and Coppa Italia winners.

A starting price of €70 million ($109 million) per season has been set for the headline package, the Serie A highlights for 2008-09 and 2009-10, with Rai, the public-service broadcaster, thought to be keen to wrestle the coverage back from incumbent rights holder the commercial station Mediaset. In 2005, Mediaset won the Serie A highlights for three seasons after offering €61.57 million per season.

Highlights rights to Serie A are sold collectively by the league, while live rights are sold individually by each club for the next two seasons. However, the live rights will also be sold centrally in the future after the Italian government this year approved a return to collective selling.

The second package of rights is for the free-to-air Serie B highlights for the next two seasons, with the starting price set at €16 million per season. The live rights for Serie B make up the third package and are available to both free-to-air and pay-television operators. However, the starting price for pay-television is €10 million per season, double the €5 million per season being asked of free-to-air broadcasters.

Radio rights for Serie A and Serie B have been valued at €4 million per season €1 million per season respectively, while the rights to the Coppa Italia in package five have been split up into four smaller packages.

The Coppa Italia packages on offer are; the first four rounds (starting price of €1 million per season), the last 16 to the final inclusive (starting price of €14 million per season), the international rights (starting price of €2 million per season for 2008-09 and €3 million per season for 2009-10) and the tournament radio rights (starting price of €3 million for both the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons).

Rai's three-contract to show the Coppa Italia ended after the 2007-08 season. La7, the Italian digital terrestrial broadcaster, also had rights to show Coppa Italia matches from the last 16 onwards in the last campaign. The Italian Super Cup rights have been split into three, with the domestic rights priced at €600,000, the international rights priced at €200,000 and the radio rights priced at €50,000. Rai broadcast the Super Cup in 2006 and 2007 after SportItalia, the satellite sports channel, had held the rights for 2005 and Mediaset broadcasting the showpiece match in 2004. Sportcal, 4th Aug 2008

Elsewhere/New Media: Operators Should Back Free Mobile TV

Weijie Yun, CEO of mobile TV semiconductor specialist Telegent, has suggested that mobile operators should back free mobile TV. His comments follow the failure of Germany’s Mobile 3.0’s subscription mobile TV service. "Despite the lack of consumer traction for subscription mobile TV services, there is no question that mobile TV technology works, or that consumers like to watch TV on their handset," he said.

"The key to success for mobile TV is to first understand what consumers want, and in this respect, content is king. Consumers are open to place-shifting television, provided that the content that they are familiar with and already enjoy stays the same and is accessible at the times that they are accustomed to viewing it. Free-to-air mobile TV enables operators to have access to the most popular content, which then provides a platform for the delivery of value-added services."

Yun noted that free-to-air mobile TV can be complementary to long term goals of pay TV services. "New consumers of mobile TV might initially choose a free-to-air mobile TV feature over a subscription service. However, the rate of consumer adoption will be much faster, opening opportunities to upsell premium content to a broader audience already accustomed to watching TV on their handset.

By offering a free-to-air service, operators also have the opportunity to leverage the service for branding and differentiation and improve their competitive position in the marketplace. "Free-to-air mobile TV may serve as the route to spur widespread adoption of mobile TV; pay TV services can then follow," commented Yun. Advanced-Television, 5th August 2008

Elsewhere/General: Gilchrist Wants Twenty20 in 2020 Olympics

Former Australian star cricketer Adam Gilchrist Monday called for the Twenty20 format to be adopted as an Olympic event in the year 2020. As the countdown begins for the Beijing Olympics, Gilchrist has strongly urged that cricket be reintroduced as an Olympic sport, which would not only enhance the game's profile internationally, but make the Olympic movement more popular in the subcontinent.

Gilchrist, who retired from international cricket earlier this year, had played for the Deccan Chargers in the inaugural Indian Premier League. "Cricket was part of the 1900 Olympics, when Great Britain beat France. But with Twenty20 cricket here to stay, now is the time for the 10 full-member nations of the ICC to plan for the development of the sport over the next 100 years," Gilchrist wrote in an article for the Deccan Chronicle daily which owns Deccan Chargers.

"Over the next century, the challenge for all of us who love the game is to spread cricket to parts of the globe that have never heard of it and currently don't play our sport. We have a responsibility to grow our game in new territories and amongst the women of the world. "I believe the Olympic Games is the vehicle the sport should use to aggressively sell the message of our sport to all 202 competing Olympic nations, so our sport is strong and robust in countries where it is currently played and exciting and ground-breaking in countries who have not yet caught the cricket bug.

"Is it a realistic dream? I really believe it is. The ICC has already taken the step to become a recognised Olympic sport and that is the first step to becoming part of the Olympic programme. "The Olympic movement knows it needs to increase its presence in the Asian subcontinent as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh contribute nearly 22 percent of the world's population. In theory, this is a win-win for the Olympic movement and the ICC and its members," Gilchrist wrote. News.WebIndia123.com, 4th August 2008