Monday, 14th February 2011

RIGHTS FEE & DISTRIBUTION

=>  Singapore’s StarHub suffered an 11% fall in pay-TV revenue in Q4 2010 after reducing the cost of its sports package in June. This followed the loss of rights to the EPL to rival SingTel (SingTel outbid StarHub with an offer worth between S$300 and S$400 mil for rights) in 2009. Despite a full-year drop of S$4 in ARPU to S$52 per month, StarHub’s pay-television subscriber total remained stable, dipping only marginally to 538,000 from 539,000 at the end of 2009. Q4 group net profit rose by 8.4% to S$80.4 million. StarHub forecast that group operating revenue in 2011 will grow in a single-digit range. SingTel reported a 6.8% increase in revenue in Singapore and 19,000 new customers for its Mio TV IPTV service in the last three months of 2010. The addition of the new Mio TV customers in the quarter meant that the IPTV service ended 2010 with a total of 264,000 customers.


BROADCAST

=>  Total Sports Asia has produced over 66 hours of live coverage from five sporting events held over 13 days in January marking an increase broadcast production output. The agency oversaw production and delivery of five live events across its core sports of Badminton, Table Tennis and Squash with the signals of these events delivered to 21 clients around the world. The next events on TSA’s Production calendar in February are the ITTF Pro Tour events in Qatar and Kuwait, the PSA North American Open from Virginia, USA and the BWF Yonex All England Open from Birmingham.


DATA

=>  The 14th Deloitte Football Money League has Real Madrid and FC Barcelona retaining last year's top listing. Combined revenues of the top 20 clubs surpassed €4 bil in 2009/10. RM tops the League for the 6th year while Barcelona is 2nd in the League for a second year. Manchester City climbed to 11th position. Tottenham Hotspur is expected to vie for top honours in comingeditions. England has largest representation from any single country, with 7 clubs. VfB Stuttgart and Aston Villa return to the top 20 absences, with Werder Bremen and Borussia Dortmund dropping out. 14 of the top 20 clubs played in the Champions League 2009/10 and 6 clubs in the Europa League. Revenues of €438.6m cement Real’s position and is the only club to surpass €400m in revenue, doing so for a second successive season. Real Madrid were over €40m ahead of their Spanish rivals.

=>  Broadcast Engineering has said the European IPTV boom has levelled off and is set to lose its position to Asia during 2011 with a surge in China and India. Big European IPTV markets, notably France, have become saturated, while emerging East European economies’ poor infrastructure and lack of investment in fibre has held back IPTV deployment. Europe was still ahead at end Q3 2010, with 46.3% of the world's 41,892,171 IPTV subscribers. Europe will soon be overtaken by Asia, while France will lose its top spot to China sometime during 2011 or 2012, the report said.