Eurovision Media Services Remains Athletics Host Broadcaster For Long Run

The EBU and European Athletics have renewed their agreement for worldwide media rights through 2027. Their partnership began in 1981.

The agreement covers the worldwide television and radio rights for European Athletics’ major events from 2020 to 2023 and from 2024 to 2027, including the Paris 2020 European Athletics Championships, and the flagship championships in 2022, 2024 and 2026.

Eurovision Media Services (EMS), the business arm of the EBU, will act as a Host Broadcaster for key events, including the European Athletics Championships from Paris 2020 through to 2026 through its production subsidiary Eurovision Production Coordination. The events will be distributed to rights-holding broadcasters over the Eurovision Global Network.

The 2022 and 2026 editions of the European Athletics Championships will again be part of a multi-sport championships in the new seven-sport model begun this year in Berlin and Glasgow.

Other events included in the agreement are the European Athletics Indoor Championships, including the 2021 edition in Torun, Poland, the biennial European Athletics Team Championships, the annual European Cross- Country Championships, as well as the European Athletics U23, U20 and U18 Championships.

European Athletics President Svein Arne Hansen said, “Athletics is a hugely popular sport and it is vitally important for its future that it continues to be showcased and promoted on the biggest platform of all, which is free-to-air television. We believe our long-standing and valued partnership with the EBU ensures that this will remain the case.”

Christian Milz, CEO of European Athletics, said, “Alongside the bedrock of our sport continuing to appear on the major television channels, we believe there is a huge untapped potential on social and digital channels for both traditional and new formats of athletics that we will look to develop in partnership with the EBU in order to reach new audiences.”

Stefan Kürten, EBU Director of Sport, who has been a guest speaker at several iSportconnect events, said, “The EBU is delighted to renew this long-standing relationship with European Athletics, demonstrating our ongoing commitment to the sport and enabling us to continue to offer our unrivalled network of free-to-air broadcasters and partners the very best sporting action.”

“This agreement utilises the full range of EBU services and will also see the EBU and European Athletics build on innovative solutions for a greater digital presence. We have seen our partnership develop and grow over the years and look forward to continuing this exciting relationship to bring athletics alive for the millions of fans worldwide.”

Perfect Timing: Tag Heuer’s Flourishing Relationship With LaLiga

The new Spanish football season kicks off this Friday, August 17. In recent years, Spain’s top flight has established itself as the best football league in the world, with both of Europe’s top club competitions won by Spanish teams this past season. Real Madrid won the Champions League and Atlético Madrid the Europa League, and Barcelona won the domestic title. Tag Heuer has been a key partner of LaLiga since 2016. iSportconnect spoke to Blanca Panzano, General Manager of Tag Heuer Spain, about the company’s flourishing relationship with the league.

Strong Sevens Ratings Boost NBC Rugby Hopes

NBC Sports is looking ahead eagerly to covering the Rugby World Cup in Japan next year after revealing that its U.S. coverage of the 2018 Rugby World Cup Sevens from AT&T Park in San Francisco last month reached nearly 9 million viewers across five telecasts on NBC and NBCSN. The exposure on the main network averaged a total audience of 1.365 million viewers for what is believed to be the most-watched live rugby telecast on record in the U.S.

Live coverage of the championship final July 22 in which New Zealand defeated England averaged 370,000 viewers. Streaming coverage across NBC Sports’ digital platforms delivered 1.7 million live minutes and 36,000 unique users.

NBC Sports / NBCSN President Jon Miller said: “We’re proud of how well received our coverage was in San Francisco and look forward to presenting the Rugby World Cup in Japan in 2019 and rugby sevens at the Olympics from Tokyo in 2020.”

NBC Sports’ coverage of the Rugby World Cup Sevens is part of a multi-year agreement with World Rugby, which includes media rights on all platforms and in all languages to the Rugby World Cups in 2019 and 2023; the Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2021; the Rugby World Cup Sevens in 2022; and the annual World Rugby U20 Championships through 2023. NBC Sports’ robust rugby portfolio also includes exclusive Olympic rugby coverage through 2032, the Six Nations Championship, and Premiership Rugby.

Overall, NBC Sports presented more than 30 hours of live Rugby World Cup Sevens coverage across NBC, NBCSN, NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app, Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA, and NBC Sports Gold. 

FIBA Scores Record Digital Audience

A junior basketball game this week between the Philippines and China generated a record online audience for a FIBA youth game of 1.5 million streaming views.

The 25th FIBA Under-18 Asian Championship group phase game (the Filipino team won) on August 8 in Nonthaburi, Thailand, racked up the impressive total on a combination of platforms, including FIBA’s Facebook, YouTube and Sina accounts in addition to viewers of the Sports5 Philippines Facebook page and Tencent and other sites.

Nicolas Chapart, FIBA Head of Digital, reacted enthusiastically to the result. “It’s a record for us for any youth game,” he said. “Last year, the biggest streaming audience for a FIBA youth game was 800,000. So it’s a big advance.”

He added: “We don’t necessarily try to bring people to one place for streaming. Our strategy is to distribute widely, in order to reach them where they are. They might watch live on Facebook or YouTube or a national federation page.”

FIBA boasts an aggregated digital audience of 16-17 million viewers. 

As of August 8, FIBA had 386,085 Twitter followers, 5.461 million Facebook fans, 470,764 YouTube subscribers for its own channel and 601,751 Instagram followers. The digital total actually aggregates a much wider range of social media partners and pages.

“Our is to grow that total to 20 million by the end of the year,” Chapart said

Asia looms very large in the digital picture. “The Asia markets love basketball and they are digitally savvy,” he said.

CBS Sports Tees Up New Tech For PGA Championship

American broadcaster CBS is making its biggest technology push to date in covering the PGA Championship now in progress at Bellerive Country Club in suburban St. Louis, Missouri.

The network will deploy 110 cameras and 175 microphones spanning 41 miles of multi-strand fibre (equalling 492 miles of actual fibre connectivity). For the first time, the production team will deploy a remote-controlled wireless Rover Cam.

On the challenging 15th hole, CBS Sports will operate a4D replay system that has an array of cameras covering 270 degrees of the tee box that allows for three-dimensional manipulation of the video. It marks the first time this technology will be used by an American broadcaster on a golf broadcast.

“The 4D Replay will be a more dimensional look at a golfers’ swing and help our announcers analyse it better,” said Ken Aagaard, Exec VP, Innovation and New Technology, CBS Sports. “The cameras will be low, so the viewer will be looking at the swing from a different angle. Combined with our Swing Vision technology, it will be a useful visual tool for our viewers, especially on one of the last holes of the tournament.”

Hawkeye Green Technology will let viewers experience the undulation of the green and see the line of the putts throughout the tournament. “Green reader technology is going to make the putts on the green come alive,” he said. “Through animations and how the greens are mapped ahead of time, we will have an accurate depiction of where the ball needs to be putt, along with the speed, for it to go in. The technology makes everything a bit easier to understand and it’s more visual than ever before.”

“The last two to three years, CBS Sports has really moved the needle from a technical coverage standpoint,” Aagaard said. “The viewer is now seeing and understanding data, like shot apex, that they might have not have known about just a few years ago.”

“Tracer tech is now everywhere throughout our broadcasts. The whole experience of watching golf is more interesting because we’re always coming up with something new. With this PGA Championship, we are bringing it all together to create a pretty cool visual for viewers.”

beIN Extends Premier League Rights In Middle East

On the day (August 10) the new English Premier League season kicks off, beIN SPORTS announced that it is extending its broadcast partnership with the league and will continue to broadcast exclusively all EPL matches in the Middle East and North Africa through 2021-22. 
 
beIN SPORTS already has exclusive rights in the region for 2018-19 and the new deal adds three more seasons. The agreement was signed in London on August 9 by Richard Scudamore, Executive Chairman of the Premier League, and Nasser Al-Khelaifi, Chairman and CEO of Qatar-based beIN Media Group.

Premier League fans in MENA will be able to watch all 380 games per season exclusively live on beIN, in addition to having access to comprehensive magazine programming, including pre- and post-match shows, as well as daily highlights and weekly wrap-up programmes. 

Subscribers to beIN’s market-leading OTT service beIN CONNECT will be able to watch all Premier League content, including the live streaming of matches, across web, tablet and mobile devices.
 
“We know there are many passionate fans of Premier League clubs right across the Middle East and North Africa, and that beIN SPORTS does an excellent job making the competition available to them,” Scudamore said. “beIN is a long-term partner of the League and its first-rate coverage has helped to grow interest in our clubs across many countries. We look forward to continuing to work with them to make the best Premier League action available to fans in the region for the next four seasons.”

Al-Khelaifi, who is also president of French club Paris Saint-Germain, said: “The Premier League has trusted beIN MEDIA GROUP and beIN SPORTS again to be the official and exclusive broadcaster, champion and custodian of its product in the Middle East and North Africa. Nothing brings people together and excites passions and emotions like sport; particularly football. The Premier League is one of the most exhilarating of all leagues in world football, attracting the best talent on and off the pitch and providing the most captivating entertainment. We are delighted to be able to exclusively offer this premium sports content to our subscribers, bringing them closer to the Premier League for many more years to come, together with our unparalleled library of movies, drama, entertainment, comedy and children’s programming. We are happy to extend our long-term partnership with the Premier League and to continue promoting the brand and growing its fan-base in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Russian Betting Brand Enters Premier League With Cardiff City

English Premier League club Cardiff City FC has named 1XBET as its Global Betting Partner for the coming season and the 2019-20 campaign.

The partnership is intended to help 1XBET, which holds a Russian gaming license, to expand its reach across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, North Africa and the Americas.

Russia currently licenses about a dozen online betting companies. 1XBET ranks among the most popular brands with market leader LigaStavok, Fonbet, Leon and Bingo-Boom.

Launched in 2007, 1XBET claims to be among the top three most-visited betting and gaming websites in the world with over 1,000 markets, and a strong emphasis on localization. The platform is translated into over 50 languages and offers 24/7 support in half of those.

“This is the first association, we have agreed within the Premier League, and we are delighted to make our step into it with a hardworking partner such as Cardiff City FC, said Eugene Kiryukhin, 1XBET’s Director for Development of International Partners

Cardiff City Executive Director & CEO, Ken Choo said: “We are excited by our cooperation with 1XBET. They are a forward-thinking, progressive business with a large global footprint.”

Asian Games Ready For Kick-Off

In terms of the number of competing athletes (over 16,000) and nations (45), the 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia will be the biggest sports competition of the summer.

The Games begin formally with an Opening Ceremony on Saturday August 18, but competition actually starts Friday August 9 with men’s group stage football at the Patriot Stadium in West Java. Broadcast preparations for covering the kick-off are complete, lines have been tested with Telkom Indonesia, graphics are in place and commentary circuits are live.

The bulk of the Games events, running for a fortnight until September 2, will take place in Jakarta (which hosted the 1962 edition) and Palembang, the first time the multi-sport event will be hosted in two cities.

Television production is being handled by IGBS, a joint venture between Infront subsidiary HBS and IMG Media. The company was formerly Doha Asian Games Broadcast Services, set up in September 2004 with the mission of being the Host Broadcaster of the Asian Games in Doha 2006. Since then it has delivered the SEA Games Singapore 2015, and provided production teams for the Asian Games Guangzhou 2010 and the Asian Games Incheon 2014.

The World Broadcaster Meeting, where IGBS presented final plans, took place in Jakarta on Monday with 14 organisations present.

The brands line-up of the Games will feature a cluttered array of sponsor and partner logos, overwhelmingly from the host nation, including only a few global brands and one Olympic TOP sponsor.

Of the 13 TOP sponsors, five are Asian companies, but South Korea’s Samsung, an Official Sponsor of the Asian Games, will be the only TOP partner taking part.

The Asian Games boast Mastercard as one of the six Official Sponsors. Arch-rival Visa is a TOP sponsor.

There are a dozen Official Prestige Partners (the top tier), with three foreign companies: Qatar airlines, Tissot watches and Chinese sportswear group 361°.

There are four Official Partners, including Japan’s Canon, which will also be a Gold Partner of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Among the Supporting Sponsors is Japanese tech group NEC, and the 31 Official Licensing partners include American brands KFC and Polo (Ralph Lauren) and Hong Kong-owned international retailer Giordano.

The 40 different sports on display will include esports as a demonstration sport for the first time in a competition sanctioned by National Olympic Committees. Esports will become a medal sport in 2022 at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China.

 

Baseball Spotlights Rock & Roll Connection

The synergy between sports and popular music came into sharp focus this week when baseball’s Cleveland Indians unveiled the logo for next year’s MLB All-Star Game.

The guitar-shaped symbol puts a spotlight on Cleveland as the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The body of the guitar is bordered by the red stitches of a baseball with the MLB logo at the head of the guitar.

MLB Deputy Commissioner Tony Petitti, on hand at Progressive Field to unveil the image for one of the sport’s most popular events, said: “You can see from the logo what we think the tie-in should be in Cleveland. We try to do something unique in every market we’re in, so music is what you can expect to see in 2019.”

The music connection is one that iSportconnect will bring into focus at the 2018 Brands Masterclass on September 18 in London. Streaming service Spotify will be on the programme with Sarah Keifer, Director of Business Marketing, EMEA, among the thought-leading speakers taking part.

MLB and the Indians are talking to the Rock Hall about taking part in the festivities around the All-Star Game.

Greg Harris, President of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, is a baseball man. He used to an executive at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

In 2016, when the Indians played in the World Series, they held a gala event at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Disney Continues To Digest ESPN+ Launch Costs

ESPN parent Walt Disney has blamed an operating loss at BAMTech, the MLB Advanced Media tech company in which it owns a controlling stake, as a key factor in reduced operating income for its cable networks in the 3rd Qtr. report issued this week. Cable revenues for the quarter increased 2% to $4.2 billion but operating income decreased 5% to $1.4 billion.

BAMTech powers ESPN’s first direct-to-consumer offering, ESPN+, launched in the American market in April of this year. For a monthly fee of $4.99, the service will stream more than 10,000 live events annually, but it will not feature the NFL or the NBA.

BAMTech is owned 75% by Disney, 125% by MLB Advanced Media, 9% by the NHL and 1% by the NBA.

A decline at family channel Freeform was also a factor in the results. ESPN as a whole actually enjoyed an increase for the period, thanks to affiliate revenue growth and the comparison to severance and contract termination costs incurred in the prior-year quarter. Affiliate revenue growth reflected contractual rate increases. Subscriber numbers actually declined

The improvement was partially offset by higher programming costs primarily due to a contractual rate increase for NBA programming. Advertising revenue also slipped due to a decrease in impressions from lower average viewership, again partially offset by higher rates. Advertising revenue was adversely impacted by one less NBA final game.