Wednesday, 13th August 2008

OLYMPIC BITS

* Organisers of the Beijing Olympics have tried to explain why sections of empty seats have been spotted at a number of events so far. For Rafael Nadal’s three-set victory over Italy's Potito Starace in the tennis competition, the venue was around 60% full, while the arena for weightlifting competition was only around half-full. Wang Wei, a spokesman for the Organising Committee said that although it is “a complicated problem”, BOCOG is “trying everything to arrange the competitions as well as possible”. He said: “Many sponsors, VIPs and members of the media have reserved seats. During qualifying rounds, sometimes they attend, sometimes they may not.” BOCOG has claimed that almost all of the 6.8 million tickets made available for the Games have been snapped up. Sport Briefing, Sport Business, Sportcal, Sports City, 12th Aug 2008

* Hadleigh Farm in Essex has been confirmed as the venue for mountain biking events at the 2012 Olympics, subject to final contract negotiations. The London Organising Committee settled on the 550-acre site after another venue proposed, also in Essex, was deemed unable to provide a suitably challenging course for riders. LOCOG chairman Lord Sebastian Coe said: “It is testament to the hard work of everyone in involved that we have been able to confirm an alternative venue for the mountain biking competition only seven months after the venue change was announced. In Hadleigh Farm we have a world-class venue for Games time with the potential for an excellent facility for elite and community use post-Games.” Sport Briefing, Sport Business, 12th Aug 2008

* The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) has signed a co-operation agreement with the Indian Olympic Committee (IOA) to support the development of sport in India. DOSB head Thomas Bach and his counterpart Suresh Kalmadi said that the partnership was intended to inspire new concepts for bilateral Olympic projects dating from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Germany will help India to establish an Olympic Academy and encourage young people to take up sport as the country prepares to host the Commonwealth Youth Games in Pune this year. Sportcal, 12th Aug 2008

* Speedo has been hogging the limelight so far in the race for exposure at this year’s Olympics. The swimwear brand has hit the headlines in the early stages of the Games due to the Speedo LZR Racer suit designed to improve swimmers’ performance. The suit has proved so effective that swimmers have been renegotiating sponsorship deals with other brands to ensure they can wear it. The brand also continues to dominate Brand Republic’s table of brand performance, produced in conjunction with brandRapport. In second place is adidas after its sponsored athletes won a slew of medals. Brand Republic Asia, 13th Aug 2008

* The first research results for Olympics viewing are out, and they underline the interest Chinese citizens are taking in the Games. According to Carat, 965 million people (72% of China’s population) watched the opening ceremony. Data from DCCI show that 32 million watched the ceremony online. And China Mobile has reported 5.7 million downloads of theme song ‘You and me’ between Friday night and the end of Saturday. Not all of Asia is as interested, though. The reaction has been mixed in Southeast Asia, with interest in Indonesia particularly low. Elsewhere on Media’s website www.media.asia, our Olympics blog continues with a post by Duncan Clark from BDA on what the opening ceremony meant for the rest of the world’s perceptions of China. Brand Republic Asia, 13th Aug 2008

* Americans Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser proved that their shock first match loss at the Olympics was just a blip and they are still among the favourites for the beach volleyball gold as they go into the last 16. The reigning world champions thundered past Argentines Martin Conde and Mariano Baracetti 21-12, 21-13 with Rogers zipping around the sand for digs and the 2.06-metre (6ft 9in), Dalhausser bashing down the blocks as if he were swatting flies. Rogers and Dalhausser came top in the Olympic qualification but fell in their first match to Latvia, which they partly blamed on staying up late at the opening ceremony the previous night. Yahoo! Eurosport, 12th Aug 2008

Global Audience Engaged By Beijing Opening Ceremony

TV markets across the globe have reported bumper viewing figures for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. The spectacular display on Friday inevitably attracted a massive audience in China itself, with an average TV audience in the country of 496 million representing 86% of the audience share, but interest around the world was also strong. In the United Kingdom, where the 2012 Olympics will take place in London, a peak of 5.4 million viewers tuned in for coverage on BBC One, while the competing nations for the 2016 Olympics also attracted impressive figures.

NBC in the United States, home of 2016 Candidate City Chicago, delayed coverage of the ceremony by 12 hours and pulled in 34.2 million viewers. NBC's rating was the highest ever for an opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics, apart from the 1996 Games held in the US city of Atlanta. NBC’s website also attracted 70 million page views for coverage of the ceremony - a tenfold increase on the opening ceremony for the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.

In Japan, approximately 50 million people watched the opening ceremony, according to the Tokyo 2016 bid team, which added that 40% of the population in the country is expected to watch some action from the Beijing Games. An audience of 4.1 million (38.8% viewing share) watched the ceremony on TVE 1 in Spain, home of rival 2016 Candidate City Madrid. Sport Briefing, 12th Aug 2008


DATA BOX

Worldwide IPTV Subscribers to Reach 53mn in 2009
Research conducted by Companies and Markets published on IPTV-News, 12th August 2008

The number of IPTV subscriber worldwide will reach 53mn in 2009, according to new estimates from a report from UK research firm Companies and Markets, with the APAC region leading growth in terms of subscribers, service revenue, infrastructure and other metrics, thanks to high broadband penetration and a supportive regulatory framework.

Worldwide IPTV service revenue is predicted to reach US$38bn in 2009, with the Americas and Western Europe forecast to be the biggest markets in terms of revenue per user, according to the report, entitled "Global IPTV Market Analysis (2006-2010)". China is expected to be the future "IPTV dragon", thanks to its rapid urbanisation, fast-growing economy and expanding middle class, while the US is expected to be a more difficult market for IPTV due to high existing pay-TV penetration, and stiff price and service competition likely to come from "entrenched" operators of cable and satellite services.

Mobile Ad Messaging Grows
GfK’s Commentary on Mobile Advertising Report published on Rapid TV News, 12th Aug 2008

GfK’s latest comments on Mobile Advertising Report (MAR) shows a high percentage of mobile phone users in the UK, US and India say they are receiving advertising messages through their mobile phone; 85% in India, 51% in the UK, and 37% in the US. These trends are all up.

Though mobile phone marketing exposure is prevalent in all three countries, the mobile delivery tools vary, says GfK. Text messaging remains the most common advertising format in all three countries with 74% of respondents recalling advertising in India, compared to 48% in the UK and just 22% in the US. Mobile internet advertising was most common in the UK, with 16% of respondents recalling advertising compared with 8% of those in the US and 4% of those in India.

Radio also showed a striking variation with nearly 40% of those in India recalling advertisements through radio on their mobile phones compared with only 9% in the UK and 3% in the US. This may be partly due to the high percentage of people in India who listen to the radio using their mobile (67% of those interviewed). The report also shows that younger male groups typically view mobile internet advertising the most. The brands recalled in advertising via this channel were mainly mobile carriers, handset manufacturers, media brands and digital entertainment companies.

GfK’s statement adds that although the US lags behind the UK and India in many mobile phone usage categories, US mobile advertising has seen steady increases over the past three quarters, up from 31% in Q4 of 2007. "We’re seeing an increasing consumer awareness of mobile advertising campaigns of all types, from text message to interactive games to mobile internet banner advertisements,” says Limbo CEO Jonathon Linner. "With mobile phone usage growing, it makes sense that more companies are seeking mobile marketing as a way to reach their segmented targets in this direct and highly interactive medium.”

Also, the number of people using mobile phones in the US has grown from 251m in Q4/2007 to over 263m this quarter, up nearly 10%. The US also shows steady increases in the number of people who recall seeing advertising through their mobile phone, from 31% to 37% over the same time period.


SPORTS SHORTS

* Malaysian Minister of Energy, Water and Communications, Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor, has launched details regarding mobile number portability (MNP). There’ll be nationwide launch of MNP in October 2008 with customers in the capital Kuala Lumpur offered the service a month earlier. Each operator will be allowed to charge for the service as they choose, although Shaziman did reveal a cap of MYR25 (USD7.53) had been set. The Ministry has also announced the Time 3 programme, which aims to enhance mobile coverage to 97% by 2010. The programme will see 1,250 network towers built in two phases; the first phase of 600 towers is already underway and is due for completion in December. The second phase of the project is due to begin in July 2009, and scheduled for completion in 2010. Wireless Federation, 12th August 2008

* Vietnam’s big mobile operators MobiFone, VinaPhone, Viettel and S-Phone will be offering promotional service packages. These packages will be available from now till end of September’08. MobiFone named it “Colleague connection” package, in which phone charges are reduced by 30-50% for groups of 5-30 callers. Viettel has VPN package with a charge reduction of 40-50%. VinaPhone and S-Fone also offer packages with charge reductions of 20-40%. According to the Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Le Nam Thang, the mobile charges, which have been falling by 15-20% per year on average, are close to the cost price. In Vietnam, at present, 60% of the population is phone subscribers, and 90% of those are mobile subscribers. The number of mobile subscribers rises by 15-20 million a year. Wireless Federation, 12th August 2008

* The Sports Network (TSN) Canada has enhanced its golf coverage by entering an agreement with the PGA (Professional Golfers’ Association) of America to broadcast a range of tournaments. The deal, which runs through 2020, will allow TSN Canada to present live broadcast coverage of the PGA Championship, Ryder Cup, Senior PGA Championship and the PGA Grand Slam of Golf. TSN Canada’s agreement continues the PGA of America's strong global coverage for its major spectator competitions, which extend to 195 countries and territories and a potential household reach of 588 million. Sport Briefing, 12th Aug 2008

* Packet Vision and Udcast launch solution for targeted television advertising over mobile TV. The two companies have developed a technology showcase to demonstrate how targeted advertising will be delivered across mobile TV. The first public presentation of their technology will take place at this year's IBC in Amsterdam. The technology showcase, will include an example of a geographically targeted advertising campaign, showing how content can be delivered to mobile TV users over standard DVB-H networks. The showcase also aims to highlight the symbiotic relationship between mobile TV and targeted advertising: the latter brings revenue to mobile TV, which in turn, provides the targetable platform and customer base which will help to accelerate the growth of addressable television advertising. According to MultiMedia Intelligence mobile video revenue will exceed $3.5 billion in 2008, and grow to $15 billion by 2012. TVover, 12th August 2008

* Chris Albrecht left IMG Worldwide to return to Foresee Entertainment, the independent content-creation, development and distribution company he formed prior to joining IMG in 2007. IMG said in a statement, “While Albrecht acknowledges that IMG has world-class media-production and distribution businesses in both sports and entertainment, when he joined the company in September 2007, the parties intended to raise substantial funds to augment and expand IMG's media and entertainment business. However, market conditions intervened to frustrate that goal. The parties are separating on an amicable basis, regretful that the association was unable to work.” Broadcasting & Cable, 12th August 2008


MORE NEWS

Mid-East/Broadcast: HDTV Promised for UAE in 2009

Various experiments have been tried locally to generate interest in HDTV in the Middle East, without much success to date. That might be about to change if the leader of a leading Gulf electronics distribution company, Eros Group, is concerned.

“The full HD service was supposed to begin last year, but was delayed. One reason was that full content in HD is not available for normal 24-hour broadcasting,” Deepak Babani, chief of Eros Group, told Gulf News. “Though the media has tried to highlight full HD, but just because the software is not available, the interest is not there. But once the software arrives, the demand for the hardware will automatically grow,” he told the newspaper.

“We have been ready for HD for two and a half years now in terms of infrastructure, but there isn’t enough content to broadcast to balance the costs,” explained Humaid Rashid Sahoo, chief of Dubai and Abu Dhabi-based cable and wireless pay-TV operator E-vision. In the oil and gas-rich Gulf states, people are buying flat-panel screens, frequently in full 1080p standard, but are only using their HDTV sets for watching Blu-ray DVDs and for gaming consoles. RapidTVnews, 12th August 2008

Hong Kong/Broadcast: i-Cable Shoring Up as Competition Bites

Hong Kong's i-Cable operation said it is responding to changing market conditions in order to “prevail over the competition”, a thinly-veiled reference to the Network of the World (Now) TV and broadband internet platform. Despite a rise in its pay-TV subscriber base of just one per cent, or 10,000 subs, in the six months to the end of June and pay-TV revenues down 16% to HK$699 million with operating profit down a whopping 39% to HK$61 million, the company beat a drum for its outlook.

In March, i-Cable won exclusive rights to UEFA Champions’ League and UEFA Cup football, while in 2007, the company scored deals for 2010 FIFA World Cup football as well as the 2010 Winter and 2012 Summer Olympic Games. However, rival Now TV has rights to the English Premier League, still a big draw for Hong Kong viewers. And i-Cable said this was not all the company was doing to try to strengthen its business in “a war of attrition”.

In their results statement, i-Cable said: “Rapidly changing market conditions call for business and programming diversification in order to break new grounds and for streamlining operations to enhance efficiency - an exercise the Group has undertaken over the past years,” the company statement said. “It also calls for investing to compete and the Group's strong financial position and low cost base place it very well to do so.”

“We have scaled up local production; bagged nearly all top sports events until 2012; sharpened our marketing and customer service operations; and diversified our business by making prudent ventures into new markets such as movie and music production, publications and the new media. We have committed to introducing the next generation transmission encryption system in order to better protect and grow our Pay TV service, while at the same time, allowing deployment of high definition television and interactive services when the market is ripe. These steps are necessary to propel us forward and to prevail over the competition.”

But signs are not good. With pay-TV revenues down despite the slight rise in subs, even i-Cable admitted that its subscriber base was suffering in quality. The 16% revenue fall was “mainly attributable to dilution from lower yield subscriptions”, the company said. Rapid TV News, 12th Aug 2008

Global/Right: Sportfive Dominates for Champions League Qualifiers

Sportfive dominates the list of agencies distributing broadcast rights for the third qualifying round of European soccer’s top-tier Uefa Champions League in the last season that the rights will be sold individually by the clubs. The Champions League third qualifying round first-leg matches kick off tonight with Italy's Fiorentina hosting the Czech Republic's Slavia Prague, and a further 15 games to take place tomorrow.

From 2009-10, the third qualifying round will be included in the centralised broadcast rights for the Champions League sold by Team Marketing, the Switzerland-based agency, in three-year packages. This change will have a significant impact on agencies who have traditionally sold rights on behalf of the home clubs.

Although it has various other income streams from soccer, Sportfive will arguably be most affected by the centralisation of rights, given its heavy involvement in this season’s third qualifying round. Sportfive is the most prominent of the agencies by some distance, with clubs it represents including Marseille of France and Germany’s Schalke 04. Schalke face Spain’s Athletico Madrid in the most high-profile tie of the round. Other clubs that Sportfive will distribute rights for include England’s Liverpool, Galatasaray of Turkey, Italy’s Juventus and FC Basel of Switzerland.

In some cases, more than one agency is involved in the distribution of rights for the home matches of a particular club, for instance when one company sells the ‘second-party’ rights (the rights in the away team’s territory) and another company sells the ‘third-party’ rights (the rights outside the two teams’ respective territories). The 'first party' rights (the rights in the home club's territory) are often sold by the home club itself. Some clubs have elected to sell their own broadcast rights for the home leg while still hiring agencies to sell rights in particular regions.

The other agencies involved in selling broadcast (and pitchside advertising) rights for the Champions League qualifiers include Global Sportnet, Sportsman Media Group, Kentaro, Infront Sports and Media and MediaPro which is handling the rights to Barcelona’s home leg against Poland’s Wisla Krakow. Smaller agencies involved include Sport Progress, the Slovak agency which is selling rights to Artmedia Bratislava’s home match against Italian giants Juventus on August 27, and Sporto Komunikacijos, the Lithuanian group responsible for the rights to Lithuanian club FBK Kaunas’ home leg against Denmark’s AaB on the same date.

One match that will receive extensive coverage around Europe and beyond is the game between Belgian champions Standard Liege and five-times European Cup winners Liverpool of England.

The decision to bundle the rights for the third qualification round with the group stage and latter stages of the Champions League from the 2009-10 season has been a blow to the agencies that have made a business out of marketing the rights on behalf of the clubs.

However, Thomas Martens, Global Sportnet’s chief executive officer, told Sportcal.com last year that his agency had ‘substantially diversified over the past two years and expanded business operations’ so as to not be dependent on the sales of rights to Champions League third round qualifiers or the Uefa Cup, the second-tier European clubs competition, for the group stage onwards.

It was announced in November that the Uefa Cup rights from 2009-10 will be centralised from the group stage onwards, instead of just for the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final as is the case in the current contract period, from 2006-07 to 2008-09. Martens did warn that agencies which had not ‘started to diversify out of football’ might struggle as a result of the increasing centralisation of rights for Europe's top club competitions. Sportcal, 12th Aug 2008


ARTICLES/COMMENTS

Is Indonesia the Next Big Thing in Broadband?

Indonesia is emerging as a hot broadband market, mainly as a result of the increasing availability of high-speed 3G and HSDPA mobile services. According to Arjun Trivedi, the head of business in Indonesia for Nokia Siemens Networks, high speed mobile services are now the dominant form of broadband access in the country.

He says, "In Indonesia today, there are slightly more than a million broadband users. Quite a substantial number of these – we estimate some 60 per cent – are wireless broadband users, principally using HSDPA. We also estimate that there are about 400,000 fixed broadband users and a little over 600,000 mobile broadband users.”

Arjun Trivedia adds, "HSPDA has replaced traditional fixed lines as the dominant platform for users in Indonesia to access the Internet with their PCs. The kind of browsing that they are doing with HSDPA is using a USB dongle, so you are talking about 600,000 users using laptops to browse the Internet – utilising the mobile network for this and not browsing using their handset or mobile phones.

“Indonesia, being a market that has not had "traditional' broadband services - like fixed-line DSL of the sort of quality you see in Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and Japan - has quickly adopted wireless broadband.

To understand why you have to look at Indonesia’s traditional fixed broadband network, which was utterly inadequate in capacity terms. The average data speeds of the fixed broadband network - if you were really lucky - used to run to perhaps 100kbit/s, but when wireless broadband networks came in we made a big jump in network and in data speeds.”

Indonesia began to roll-out 3G services early in 2007 and HSDPA services offering speeds of up to 3Mbit/s are now available in 16 Indonesian cities and the country is now one of the fastest growing markets in the Asia Pacific in terms of 3G. There are now some 8 million Indonesian 3G subscribers and the market is booming. One of the knock-on effects of the increased availability of broadband access is the growing demand for online services.

Arjun Trivedia says, “This has brought about a transition in the way people regard the Internet here and is creating demand for richer services. So now mobile operators coming out with a range of value-added applications such as e-commerce and e-banking services, and these are changing the economy and the country." TelecomTV, 12th August 2008