BPN 1034 Dutch soccer returns home to public broadcast

Dutch public television had something to celebrate last night: it acquired the rights to the premier soccer league. After an outing of three years with the commercial and in the meantime defunct television station Talpa, the premier soccer league has decided for certainty. In the meantime soccer lost 1 million viewers over the past three years and it will get less money for the games than the 35 million euro from the commercial TV station.

The public broadcast station NOS now has the rights to the television summaries on Sunday night and to the radio rights for 20 million euro. The premier league decided to keep the rights of live games to itself. The commercial broadcast companies RTL and SBS had also tendered, but their offers were rejected.

Now everything will return to the old format. On Sunday night 7 pm the tifosi will be in front of the television and watch the summaries without breaks and in the ranking of the competition. Talpa had changed the time, the order of the games and of course interrupted the broadcast with commercials. In the three years of broadcast, soccer lost one million viewers.

As to the rights of the live games, the premier soccer league decided to start exploiting their own channel. There were offers of Liberty Global’s Chello Media (channel Sport1), Tele2, KPN and the consortium Football4all, a consortium of the cable operator Zesko Holding and Canal Digitaal Satellite. Despite the offer of Football4all, the minimum financial warranties of 45 million euro as well as the HD broadcasts and interaction, the offer was rejected. This indicates that that the premier soccer league wants to get more out of their own channel. So far the premier soccer league thinks that it will pick up 70 million euro in the first three years. The aim is to get 600.000 to 700.000 subscribers.

In the months ahead before the start of the premier league in September, a lot of organising will have to be done. A consortium has been set up for this. Endemol has been taken aboard as a strategic partner and the Rabo bank is the financial partner guaranteeing the 70 million euro of the former deal. For the production an open tender will held, which probably will be a fight between Eyeworks and Endemol. Besides the infrastructure for financing and the TV production, the consortium will have to sell the distribution rights of the broadcasts on differnt platforms. So far the IPTV soccer subscription of Tele2 has an audience of 400.000 viewers, among which KPN subscribers; now Tele2 and KPN will be able to negotiate separately. Canal Digitaal satellite channel will bring in viewers. But also Chello’s Sport1 most likely will be an outlet for all the cable operators, unless Zesko starts to open up an outlet of its own.

The premier soccer league has chosen for certainty of the broadcasts of the summaries and the radio rights. It has also decided not to be depended anymore on third parties and has followed the US model of the NBA and other sports organisations by setting up a channel of their own to be distributed by third parties. Given the various existing distribution infrastructures such as IPTV, satellite and cable, it will be able to pick up substantial sums.

As to HD broadcasts of soccer games no statement has been made. The public television companies have decided not to broadcast the coming European Championships in HD. They will experiment with some games but will not broadcast them all in HD. This is a blow for the television shops as they will loose a strong argument for selling HD prepared television sets.

Blog Posting Number: 1034

Tags: IPTV, HD

Cross-channel rights to Dutch soccer premier division

The Dutch soccer world is in a stage of excitement, as the tender to the broadcast rights of the premier division has been closed. For the Dutch soccer team the rights mean revenues, while for the viewer/user it means access to the summaries and games.

The soccer games have become a cross-channel rights circus. Besides the rights to the premier league games of men, the rights are also sold to the games of women. The cross-channel rights concern television and radio over cable, IPTV and mobile. A complicating factor is the formats: previews, live games, summaries and archived games.

The participants in this tender have not been announced, but there were six major candidates for the all over rights. The Dutch public broadcast NOS lost two years ago the summaries to the new broadcast station Talpa/Ten. Versatel, now Tele2 had the rights to the full games and shared the rights amongst others with the telecom incumbent KPN. But after two years the scene has changed dramatically. Talpa/Ten has terminated broadcasting and the rights went to RTL.nl. Versatel hoped to pick up 100.000 IPTV/ADSL clients with the premier league soccer, but this did not work out at all.

Now the potential bidders limited themselves to six candidates: NOS, Tele2, KPN, RTL and SBS. RTL and SBS have not tendered, but a novice surprised everyone: Zesko, a combination of cable operators (Casema, @Home and Multikabel). This conglomerate does not cover the entire country with its cable infrastructure, but to fill some gaps they went into a deal with Canal Digitaal, a satellite distributor of movies, sports and digital channels. It is taken for granted that no foreign media party has turned in a bid for the rights.

The rights have been eagerly fought over the years. When the public broadcast company lost the rights to Talpa, Talpa paid 35 million euro for it. Yet the broadcast station lost at least a half million viewers due to the change in format and the commercials during the broadcasts. This round of bids might top the 100 million euro, which novice Zesko is said to be prepared to pay. Just twenty years ago the rights were worth 1,4 million euro.

The Premier League combination, which is selling the rights, will take its time for a decision. They have had two bad experiences in the past years. The telecom company Versatel/Tele2 wanted to use soccer to draw in new clients and when this did not work it started to sell out its rights to the digital channel of KPN. And the Talpa/Ten transfer of the rights to RTL has not brought the premier league more exposure; in fact due to the change of stations people have lost track of the premier league. So the question for the premier league combination is now, whether they will accept the high bid of the cable operators’ consortium or whether they will cut the package up and offer it to separate companies, who in turn can make their own distribution combines.

From the content point of view this bidding is interesting. We are talking about highly appreciated sports content. There was a day that on Sunday night at 7 o’clock no less than 4 million sat ready on the couch for the summaries; now only 3 million find the proper broadcast station. So why should the price go up, when the number of viewers is going down. On the other hand live games will be able to be viewed with a set-top box or by IPTV subscription. So there is certainty about part of the revenues.

So far soccer content has been a cross-channel commodity for the Premier League combination and the bidders. No cross-media potential has been seen yet in soccer content. The stress of soccer content has been on distribution; only the larger clubs have been able to form a community and have their virtual club house.

Blog Posting Number: 981

Tags: sports, sports content, IPTV

Dutch TV station Tien, aka Talpa, exit

While Philips was celebrating its 25th anniversary of the Compact Disc, the Dutch television station Tien (in English Ten), a.k.a. Talpa, of John de Mol had its own exit party. After two years and four days the Dutch television station of John de Mol stopped. The spoils will be picked up by RTL Netherlands which has started RTL8 as an outlet for some shows now. RTL8 will aim as women as a segment. RTL also acquired the 32 million euro flag ship of the premier soccer league in the Netherlands.

You can ask the question what went wrong and go into a lot of nifty details. More interesting is the question whether Tien had an effect on the Dutch broadcasting world, which is a world of ‘more of the same’. When SBS has a skating show, RTL will have a variation on the theme. When RTL has Idols, SBS will have Who wanna be a popstar. So two years ago John de Mol promised to shake up the broadcasting world with new formats. And he tried. The news did not just have anchor persons, but they had a group of VIPs around the table, discussing the news of the day. This format was given up fast and Tien returned to the anchormen. Also soccer was going to be presented differently. People did not like it and at seven o’clock on Sunday night, when there should have been a prime time audience of 2,5 million viewers only 1,5 million soccer tifosi showed up. But John de Mol tried to bring new programs and he did. So the originator of the reality show Big Brother thought up the Golden Cage, where reality and fiction are intermingled; the winner keeps the mansion which is inhabited during the show and has a chance on the jack pot of 1 million euro. A change in advertising format had been promised by Tien; the station would work together with the advertiser. In this discipline things changed. And Tien used internet better than the public broadcast station

When Tien was announced as Talpa, the public as well as the commercial television and radio stations got a fright. They were sure going to loose audience shares to such a star studded station. The public stations went through a painful rescheduling and horizontal scheduling, while the commercial ones started to buy new formats. But after a year it was all over for Tien; yet Tien had shaken up the public and commercial stations. Now RTL is the wise guy on the block, having the soccer premier league and the start programs of Tien.

What is John de Mol going to do? He will not sit back and view the world. In fact he is moving his attention from the Dutch broadcast world to the world scene with Endemol. This company was acquired from Telefónica for 2.63 billion euro in May by a three-way consortium comprising Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset, the company co-founder John de Mol through his Cyrte Investments vehicle, and Goldman Sachs. John de Mol will be involved in the operations of the company. One of his first actions was to remove the Telefónica chairman Elías Rodriguez-Viña Cancio as fast as he could, undoing the parachuting of a Spanish CEO in 2002. Instead he put in his veteran governor Aat Schouwenaars. Having put his man in place, John de Mol will have to start looking for money coffers, as the take-over is falling victim to the global credit crunch. The syndication by the banks Goldman Sachs, ABN Amro, Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse, Lehman and Merrill Lynch has been postponed as debt investors refused to take part in high-risk buyouts. The consortium has also almost all of the remaining 25 per cent of shares; the owners of the remaining shares which total less than 1 percent of the shares. Endemol will soon leave the Dutch stock exchange.

Blog Posting Number: 842

Tags: broadcast

John de Mol playing chess

While the newspaper and book publisher PCM is looking for a new strategy, John de Mol’s television station TIEN (ten; formerly Talpa) is in trouble. De Mol is now playing chess on more than one board.

John de Mol is in principle a format creator and producer. So when he started the broadcast station TIEN more than a year ago, everyone was looking with anticipation. It was not the first time that he started a commercial television station. In the nineties he had started SEVEN, but this became a disaster due to broadcast politics in The Netherlands. This time the forecasts were better. He hired a star-studded stable of presenters, bought the soccer rights to the premier league, laid on some new formats for entertainment and news, formulated a new policy for commercials and started. The public broadcast companies rethought their radio and television policies and the commercial broadcast companies like RTL and SBS anticipated with new programs.

But the game is over for the broadcast station TIEN. At least that is the way it looks. For weeks already rumours are flying around that John de Mol is talking to RTL and SBS. The talks have been confirmed, but no comments have been made about the direction of the talks. Key in the talks will be the soccer rights. John de Mol bought them and paid a lot of money for it. If the station TIEN stops, the rights go back to the soccer association and principally would come up for auction. But as the soccer season has not ended yet, the soccer association will most likely co-operate with a transfer to another station. Most likely John de Mol will be able to decide which ones as that company will have to buy the rights for the remaining part of the contract. And the station that gets the rights can be assured of high viewing figures on the Sunday night.

In the meantime the troubles of TIEN have not stopped John de Mol of playing on another chess board: Endemol. This entertainment company, for 75 percent part of Telefonica, is up for sale and by the beginning of April a decision will be taken by Telefonica’s board about the offers. John de Mol is one of the parties involved. His investment company is forming a consortium with the Italian Mediaset of former Prime Minister Berlusconi to buy Endemol. The consortium is not the only one making an offer. The former owner of the French division of Endemol is making an offer; a private equity consortium is putting down a bid. And in the last days the Italian media company De Agostini has shown interest. If John de Mol wins the bid, he will be back in his former company, which includes his name.

And if these two major actions are not nerve wrecking enough, John de Mol is buying shares in de Telegraaf Media Group (TMG), not to produce a newspaper, but to influence SBS, in which TMG has shares. He also is investing in smaller companies, oriented towards internet such as Bright, an internet site and magazine and in an internet advertising company Spotzer Media.

Oh well: you win some, you loose some. The John de Mol story continues

Blog Number Posting: 710

Tags: broadcast

Second Life: a flight from First Life

I am a veteran in multimedia of 62 years and text oriented. When I see all the rumour around Second Life, I wonder whether I should study it better or even dive into it, like I did with blogs; but blogs are text-oriented and not part of the visual culture.

Today I read about the Dutch Protestant university, De Vrije Universiteit (VU), in Amsterdam having created a virtual department in Second Life. (The angel in the drawing below is - of course - not part of their site). The university researches the opportunities to teach and do research there. This looks logical as Second life unites students and teachers into a learning community.


Of course we had had companies toppling over each other in order be present in Second Life. The Dutch ABN Amro bank has a virtual branch in Second Life, while its competitor ING Bank will enter Second Life in the company of partners such as Rivers Run Red creating Our Virtual Holland (uncommon nationalism for Dutch people). Philips opened a concept store. Dutch Internet bureaus like Evident, IN10 and Tam Tam are present in Second Life and Evident went out to recruit new employees. Also media companies have created their virtual spot. The Dutch youth broadcaster BNN opened a hang-out. Talpa Digital opened Dropzone.

I am wondering about the hype. It is a very small group of people visiting Second Life and yet even stock quoted companies put a lot of money in a virtual space. ABN Amro bank said that they had every day some 80 people passing by. Endemol had in Big Brother only 6 people passing by. ABN Amro is getting realistic about Second Life as it notes that people passing by are disappointed when they notice that they can not bank in real time or with Linden dollars.

So is it only a hype? I am reminded of the son of a neighbour who created his own worlds. He drew maps, built houses, developed a language and designed a political system. Since he has become a nuclear scientist, he no longer is busy with the virtual world. Will we see the same thing happening in the development of Second Life. Will there be the next interesting thing overpowering this virtual world?

I see Second Life as part of the change in communication, from text into the visual culture of graphics, animation, photographs and movies. This means that veterans like me will have to get used to visuals. So Second Life is and island for the next generation. So do not trust companies like ABN Amro and ING Bank getting into this virtual world. They enter the virtual world to experiment with business; when they notice that there is no business, they will leave the virtual offices. Second Life has also good aspects too. It is a source for gaming, creativity and co-creation.

But also the aura around the hype site is tarnished by attitudes from First Life. A few days ago, the Dutch news broadcasts drew attention to the paedophile sites in Second Life. Paedophiles can design their own victims and take them; of course, for money.

I am still lurking at Second Life and questioning whether Second Life is a flight of First Life.

Blog Posting Number: 674

Tags: virtual world, second life