Will YouTube become a serious player in the market and act as an outlet for rights-holders to kill off piracy? Is 3D television the technological development that will revolutionise the interactive sports viewing experience? Has the advertising market finally bottomed-out for commercial broadcasters across the world?
Neal Pilson, former president of the US network CBS, said at the 2009 League Technology Summit in New York that 2010 was the “end of normal” for the industry and it should be prepared to enter a new era of dynamic change.
The 2009 ‘year of crisis’ has been cast aside; the advertising market is picking up in Europe, much to the pleasure of commercial broadcasters (despite US network NBC forecasting a $250 million loss on last month’s Olympics). Pay-television is holding strong with premium sports content driving subscriptions and free-to-air sports audiences are hitting new highs (seen by the record-breaking Super Bowl audience of 106.5 million last month). This year’s FIFA World Cup has been predicted to follow suit and break viewing records across the globe.
The front page story in the rights market before Christmas was the unstoppable English Premier League juggernaut, which smashed through the global recession to drive its international revenues up to record levels. Competition was consistently strong in most television markets, and outside from China and Japan, Asia was no different, contributing a large chunk to the league’s total international revenues of over a billion dollars for the three years from 2010-11.
Asia has been a hotbed of activity in the past calendar year, reaching a frenzied peak when South East Asian pay-broadcasters fought one another for the ‘must-have’ EPL rights from next season onwards.
The EPL has seen its profile surge over the past few years in South-East Asia, due in part to the high-standard of football, Premier League clubs touring Asia in the pre-season to boost their fanbase, but equally importantly, the well-timed slots in which the games are played. Big matches in rival European leagues in Spain and Italy are played in the early hours of the morning South-East Asian time whereas the Big Four Premier League match-ups fall nicely into a primetime evening slot.
In Singapore, the financial centre building its credentials as a global sports hub, and host of the 2010 SPORTELAsia event, telecoms operator Singtel won the Premier League rights ahead of rival pay-platform Starhub, paying $250 million across three years, according to TV Sports Markets estimates, an increase of just under 50 per cent.
Singapore, alongside Hong Kong, is one of the league’s most lucrative international markets due to historical ties with the British Empire and the massive interest in Manchester United and Liverpool football clubs in particular. In Hong Kong, I-Cable blew its competition out of the water, snatching the Premier League rights from rival PCCW for a fee of over $200 million. Pan-regional broadcaster ESPN STAR Sports bagged the rights in 18 territories including India and Indonesia.
In other major Asian rights-deals of the last year, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV paid a record fee for the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cups. CCTV is one of the strongest public-funded operators in the world, and although it still is the ‘routine’ go-to broadcaster to whom rights-holders sell their rights, the growing power of provincial channels Shanghai Media Group, Beijing TV and Guangdong TV has shown positive signs of market development in China.
For the full story, including a case study of how rights-holders approach the Chinese market, see the latest edition of SportBusiness International published March 1.
