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

History of Tien (2)

The Dutch TV station Tien has a history of two years.

- Beginning of May 2004, John de Mol leaves the tv production company Endemol, a subsidiary of the Spanish telecom Telefonica after a row about the appointment of a Spanish governor.

- De Mol starts talking to the owner of the childrens’ channel Nickelodeon about filling the evening hours. On 9 October 2004 the soccer game Macedonia vs Netherlands is broadcasted on Nickelodeon. With the game De Mol drew attention to his new TV station.

- On November 2004 Talpa (Spanish for mole) is awarded a broadcast license by the Commission for the Media.

- In December John de Mol is awarded the summary rights for the premiere soccer league.

- In the first part of 2005 more and more names of starts, supposed to start to work for De Mol, are leaked to the press. His sister Linda de Mol is followed by local Dutch starts. The name Tien (Ten) for the stations is used but has to disappear as the station SBS claims the name rightfully. The name Talpa is used for the time being.

- On August 13, 2005 Talpa broadcasts its first evening filling program.

- In October Talpa announces to aim at is more important target group of 20 till 49 years old and wants a market share of 10 percent.

- From the beginning the viewing statistics were dramatically bad, except for soccer programs, a soap and a local stars series. Especially the early evening programs scored badly and were several moved around. The soccer programs scored okay, but the format was different from the public broadcast, which broadcasted the soccer games in a different format formerly.

- From October 2006 the name Talpa changes into Tien (Ten), after an agreement was reached with SBS Netherlands, which had the rights to the name Tien. Talpa Media Holding, the holding company of De Mol, insists that a second station with arise along station Tien.

- Towards the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 station Tien is often in the news, but negatively. The intended torment show The Golden Cage evoked a lot of commotion. It looks like this was a major mistake in the marketing of the station.

- In the second quarter of 2007 rumours have it that station Tien will not be part of the new TV season programming, despite better viewing statistics due to the European Soccer Championships under 21 and Deal or No Deal.

- On June 26 John de Mol announces the end of the Dutch TV station Tien. Programs of the station will be integrated into the programming of RTL Netherlands. This company will start a new station RTL8 next to RTL4, 5 and 7.

Blog Posting Number: 799

Tags: television

John de Mol kills off his Dutch TV station Tien (1)

It was bound to come: the end of the Dutch TV station Tien, formerly known as Talpa. It had taken some time to negotiate a proper transfer of the assets of the station: programs, stars and rights. Last Tuesday the announcement could finally be made and the owner, the Dutch TV entrepreneur John de Mol, did it himself. For the second time he had to close a TV station.

After two years the TV station has failed to make a lasting impression on the Dutch television market. Most of the programs, stars and the rights to the premiere soccer league will be transferred to RTL Netherlands, a subsidiary of the RTL empire. John de Mol will receive a 26,3 percent of shares in RTL Netherlands in return.

Why did it fail? In an interview with the Dutch daily financial FD, John de Mol speculated that it was an imago problem, partly with himself and partly with the station. He is seen as an arrogant guy in the market (while he is a figure in the background), while the station was star studded. And the Dutch do not like arrogant people and are not easily impressed by stars. There was an imago problem, which is true, but this is not the whole truth. For a starting TV station, it is most important that you are found. And apparently a lot of people could not. Did the public broadcast company easily gather 2 million viewers on a Sunday night for soccer broadcasts, Tien only picked up half. Of course another reason is the hostile politics between public and commercial TV companies, fed by protective legislation and politics (this while the airwaves are no longer a scarcity, but have become a commodity).

But being a shrewd entrepreneur John de Mol negotiated his way out. He was in talks with SBS, but with no result. I suspect that the company was unable to formulate a real offer as the holding company was in the process of being taken over by Premiere. New masters, new policies and this was limbo. But the deal John de Mol made with RTL Netherlands is probably better that continuing his own station. He will be able to transfer the soccer rights; combined with the rights to international soccer games of RTL Netherlands, the station is now the soccer station and the viewing audience will increase to old proportions. Programs like the Golden Cage will be broadcast on RTL channel 4. RTL Netherlands will get star presenters like the sister of John de Mol, Linda de Mol. But RTL Netherlands will make a jump in the viewing statistics and become a real threat to the fragmented public broadcast companies.

Of course some stars will see their contracts suddenly terminated as will back-office staff people. But John the Mol might look a hard-nosed entrepreneur, he is loyal to his stars and staff; in fact he promised the staff who started with him two years ago a full year’s pay, despite his belief that 90 percent of them will have found a job in a few months.

It is the second time that John de Mol has to close a TV station. In 1996 he announced the start of a sports station, named Sport7. The station was to broadcast sports events and should have become a pay-channel. Again it was star studded. And again John de Mol had to close it, even before it really came on stream. The second time around, however, he broadcasted programs for two years. In fact, he did more. He became a real cross-media producer, who, for example, gathered a community around the program The Golden Cage. The program was daily on TV for half an hour, including commercials and 24/7 on internet on the basis of a subscription.

John de Mol now will throw himself into the production company Endemol with the knowledge that he will produce guaranteed programs for RTL Netherlands. And in the meantime he will invest in new ventures.

Blog Posting Number 798

Tags: television, cross-media

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